


what we leave behind

by sappho_e



Category: Ruby Redfort Series - Lauren Child
Genre: Amnesia, Blood and Injury, Clancy Crew is trying his best, Continues After Blink And You Die, Kidnapping, Later Graphic Description of Blood and Injury, Memory Loss, Spoilers for Final Book and Most of the Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28249413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sappho_e/pseuds/sappho_e
Summary: It's spring of 1974 and Ruby Redfort wakes up alone in a hospital bed with no memory of the past year of her life. Her parents somehow have a new butler, who seems to be Clancy Crew's new best friend.Ruby's pretty sure she's missing something important but she's even more certain that Clancy is trying to hide something from her.Even worse, the butler is sure she hasn't been injured from falling out of a tree or some other darling childish mishap but that someone has purposely tried to put her in hospital.But who would come after Ruby Redfort?(Updating Tuesdays)
Relationships: (hinted), Blacker/Miles Froghorn/Art Hitchen Zachery, Ruby & Clancy (Platonic)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Ruby Redfort Big Bang





	1. you told your kids that they'd live long forever

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably one of my longest fics, especially one with a solid plot and has taken priority over all and any uni work I possibly have. This was written while only listening to Queen's You're My Best Friend for those 70s vibes. 
> 
> I'm incredibly thankful to sinxaschwarz on tumblr who did all the amazing art for this chapter! I've never had art for any of my works before, and all three pieces just perfectly fit my idea of Clancy and Ruby's descriptions, I'm so pleased with how they came out!  
> Thanks has to also go to the discord chat for listening to all my dumb ideas for all the characters and also filling in trivia about the series (I am begging you to ignore any plotholes, they're there for the aesthetic okay)
> 
> Chapter title is from Declan Mckenna's "The Kids Don't Want To Come Home." I have a full playlist for this fic that's probably massively overplayed sad indie hits but I'll link it as soon I figure out how. 
> 
> Lastly thank you reader, hope you enjoy this, please leave a kudos/comment/bookmark if you liked!

The girl woke up, alone in a stark white bright room. 

The sheets under her fingers weren’t familiar, but as she squinted around, nothing seemed familiar at all. 

Turning her head slowly, she could just barely make out a spectacle-shaped blur at the bedside table. She reached over and slipped her glasses on, forced to wear them a little lop-sided due to the bandages wrapped around the side of her head. She wasn’t sure where she was and there was no way she was going to go exploring with the large plaster cast she currently sported on her right leg. 

She was still lying there, thinking quite hard and staring at a massive flower arrangement which spilled out of the vase and smelled something potent when the door clicked open and a starched nurse and a scrawny blonde boy came into her room. 

The nurse made a sound of surprise and turned on a smart heel back out of the door when she saw the girl awake. The boy continued into the room with a wide grin and flapping arms. 

“Rubes!” He exclaimed and a wave of pain crashed against her forehead, forcing a gasp from her. “You’re finally awake, Ms Dobson’s gone to get your parents, maybe the doctor too. You’ve been asleep for three whole days!” 

The girl pressed a hand against her temple, feeling the expertly wrapped bandages there. 

“Even Mrs Digby says that’s a record. I don’t know what we would’ve done if you hadn’t woken up soon.” The boy’s elbows hadn’t stopped flapping and the girl was beginning to feel concern for the monstrous flower arrangement near him. Distantly, down the corridor of the open door there was a squawk followed by rushing footsteps. 

“It could’ve been worse, hey Rubes? They could’ve lobotomised you.” 

The girl blinked hard. “Could’ve been worse?” She echoed, voice thin and crackly from disuse. 

“Who’s Rubes? And who are you?” 

Clancy took several tripping steps back from Ruby, his arms stilling in shock. 

He’d only recovered enough to close his mouth when Sabina and Brant Redfort burst into the room, somehow slamming the already open door against the wall. 

“Ruby! Darling, welcome back to the land of the living!” Sabina trilled, headed straight for the stranger in the hospital bed in front of Clancy. She had wrapped her up in a hug before Nurse Dobson had even crossed the threshold. 

“Hello.” Ruby said somewhat stiffly but she lifted her arms to pat Sabrina on the shoulder. Her eyes didn’t leave Clancy, who was trying to think of the best way to break the news. Dobson was trying to shoo Sabina away so she could check Ruby but only succeeded in getting Sabina away long enough for Brant to step in for a “How’s my precious daughter?” and another hug. This time she smiled a little, a recognisable smile that calmed Clancy a bit. It was Ruby when she had figured something out. 

“How are you feeling, Miss Redfort?” The nurse asked, pulling out a flashlight to check Ruby’s pupils. Ruby dragged her eyes away from Clancy to squint into the light. 

“My head hurts. I’m thirsty.” Ruby stated, sounding more and more lost. Brant immediately marched to the door to demand some water for his daughter. 

Dobson nodded briskly before wrapping a plastic cuff around Ruby’s upper arm for blood pressure. Clancy had seen this routine before and knew the next step would be checking the heart rate monitor and maybe even examining the pretty gory gnash on Ruby’s head. He nodded at Ruby, encouragingly, as the nurse pumped the blood pressure balloon. 

He wasn’t sure why Ruby hadn’t mentioned the rather big and pressing issue of her memory loss but he couldn’t blame her due to the parental smothering that was currently happening. Then again, Clancy wasn’t sure if telling Sabina that her daughter had lost her entire memory would be, in any shape or form, beneficial to Ruby’s healing process or Sabina’s sanity.

Ruby blinked back, green eyes wavering behind her glasses and Clancy wasn’t quite sure whether it was on purpose that Ruby spelt out “S.O.S” or just a coincidence. 

“You have a concussion, Ruby. Do you feel dizzy or nauseous?” The nurse continued. Ruby nodded, lips pressed tightly together. 

“You’ll be on bed rest for a few days until the worst of the concussion passes and then you can resume normal activity, albeit activity that won’t worsen your break.” Dobson told her, in a firm but kind way. She made one last note on the clipboard that hung off the foot of the bed and nodded at Sabina who was alternating between rearranging the flowers in the vase that she had sent in specially and fussing over Ruby’s bruises and bandages. 

“I’ll send for Doctor Williams. Her vitals are looking good, it looks like you got very, very lucky out there Miss Redfort.” She said on her way to the door, and Sabina beamed. 

“Our Ruby’s always been lucky.” She said happily, and Clancy was in danger of biting through his tongue. Ruby looked at him like he was supposed to be running the show here with a pointed widening of her eyes and a glance to Sabina, but Clancy had no idea of how he was supposed to handle the situation. In all of his worst imaginings of what would happen when Ruby woke up, he hadn’t expected this at all. 

“What on earth were you doing Ruby?” Sabina asked and Ruby seemed to pale against the white sheets. “I thought we’d had enough after all of that ‘snitching’ ‘hitching’ business last summer.” 

“I’m sure it wasn’t her fault.” Clancy started in Ruby’s defence, having had this conversation several times now and hoping to have buttered the Redfort’s’ up to whatever excuse Ruby was going to make. Which, Clancy was sure, she would share right now. Sabina looked at Ruby expectantly. Ruby eyed up the window like perhaps she might escape on a broken leg and a major concussion. 

There was a knock on the ajar door and Clancy turned, truly not caring about who it was as long as it took him away from this conversation. 

Hitch stood in the doorway with a basket— no doubt lots of food from Mrs Digby— and an easy smile on his face. His suit jacket was neatly buttoned and he’d found time for a tie and the tie-clip with a tiny fly attached. 

“Hello Ruby, Clancy.” He said warmly, eyes locking on Ruby and then Clancy like he already knew something had gone wrong. “Sabina, Brant has the change of clothes for Ruby but he’s thinking of leaving the blue peacoat in the car. I suggested she may need something warm after her ordeal, but he was quite firm.” 

Sabina let out a sound of outrage. “She’ll need the peacoat, no doubt. I’ll go and get it.” She whirled on Ruby for another hug and kiss to the cheek and then out of the door, Hitch stepping aside easily. Hitch clicked the door shut after her and gave a grin to both children. 

Clancy just about teared up in relief. “Hitch we have a situation.” He said weakly, as the butler put the basket on the very foot of the bed, which Ruby’s feet didn’t even come close to touching and began unpacking wrapped sandwiches and cookies. 

“More of an issue than Ruby in a hospital bed and no idea why?” Hitch asked, passing Clancy a cookie he was almost too upset to eat. 

“Try breaking a leg and having no memory.” Ruby challenged from the head of the bed. Now when Clancy looked at her, he realised she was keeping a suspicious eye on Hitch, not touching the Digby Club he’d within her reach. 

Hitch straightened up from the basket. “If you’re pulling my leg, kid.” He said with a sharp edge, casting an eye at Clancy like he expected this to be a prank. 

Clancy bit into his cookie glumly. “It’s no joke. She didn’t know her own name when I came in, let alone me.” 

“Those were my parents.” Ruby added, slowly like she was not entirely sure of the answer. Hitch waited for her to speak, surely knowing how uncomfortable Ruby Redfort must be for not knowing something immediately, before nodding. 

“Your parents are Sabina and Brant Redfort. You’re Ruby Redfort.” Hitch listed off on his fingers. Clancy looked between the two of them, at Hitch’s creased brow and Ruby’s narrowed eyes behind her glasses. “This is Clancy Crew, your best friend and Mrs Digby your housekeeper will be coming in as soon as she can convince the nurses’ station that you can have three guests more than the hospital allows. We have about five minutes.” 

Clancy knew Ruby had stored all of that away, although her normally amazing memory must be pretty empty now. Ruby chewed on the inside of her lip distractedly and Clancy immediately patted his pockets down for a spare pack of her bubble-gum. He found a single wrapped square, or rather a blob due to it having been sat on once or twice and threw it on her lap. Ruby looked away from Hitch in surprise, focusing instead on the gum. A smile spread over her face and something in Clancy’s chest relaxed at the sight. She unwrapped it and popped it in her mouth, leaving her bloody lip alone for the moment. 

“So who are you?” Ruby said, snapping a bubble at Hitch. 

Hitch knew the whole deal by now but was still slightly taken aback by Ruby’s memory loss. Clancy knew the feeling. Him and Ruby had had years together which had been lost in the blink of an eye for a reason that Spectrum had yet to ascertain, but Hitch and Ruby were close too, and had their fair share of near death scrapes too. 

“I’m Hitch, your parents’ house manager.” Hitch said easily, and Clancy opened his mouth to add “secret agent” but realised Hitch wasn’t saying it for a reason. Whatever the reason, Clancy didn’t like it. A side glance from Hitch had him shutting his mouth again reluctantly. 

“A butler?” Ruby asked dryly and Hitch quirked a corner of his mouth. 

“Something like that. Now eat, Mrs Digby made you that club specially. What did the nurse say about the memory loss?” Hitch said, smoothly moving the topic away from spies and agencies. Clancy was still silently rebelling, but he knew he could fill Ruby in on all the important stuff as soon as Hitch left. And if Hitch was any good at being a high-level undercover secret agent, he should know that Clancy would do it too. 

Ruby looked at Clancy, her jaw paused mid-chew. “Crew here didn’t say anything about it, so I thought we were keeping it on the downlow.” 

Clancy nearly dropped his cookie in horror. “I didn’t say anything because you didn’t say anything! I thought there was a big plan!” 

Hitch looked between the two of them with growing annoyance. 

“Why would I have a plan? By the looks of things my last plan left me in a hospital bed with a broken foot.” 

“You actually broke your fibula, it’s one of the bones in your lower leg. And you always have a plan! I wasn’t going to blab and ruin everything.” 

Hitch ran a hand through his hair and sighed heavily. Logically Ruby’s genius would not have actually suffered despite her memory loss but at the moment he felt like the harried babysitter to two arguing toddlers. Normally Redfort was better than this bickering. 

“So, no one has told the doctor that they should still be examining the head injury?” He interrupted before anyone could add anything else. 

Clancy sheepishly shook his head. Ruby shrugged.

Hitch stifled a second sigh and reminded himself than this would be no more difficult than dangling over a cliff from a helicopter during a wildfire to rescue an unconscious teenager. However, turning on his heel to leave the room and the children to argue amongst themselves was a lot easier on his stress levels. 

Clancy stuffed the rest of his cookie in his mouth to avoid arguing with Ruby. Ruby took this opportunity to push the Digby Club away from her and lean forward towards Clancy. 

“I think I remember you now.” She admitted and Clancy’s shoulders slumped in relief. 

“You had just woken up. The nurse said you would be pretty disorientated when you first got up because of how hard you hit your head.” Ruby was waving a hand at him impatiently and Clancy closed his mouth, although he would’ve liked a normal conversation about how Ruby was actually managing. 

“Since when did we get a butler?” She hissed, eyeing the door to make sure Hitch was gone. “I remember my parents and I’m remembering other bits and pieces but where’s this bozo come from?” 

Clancy forgot to be pleased at Ruby’s innate trust in him due to the realisation that Ruby was effectively back to square one in the whole ‘trusting Hitch’ thing. He remembered Ruby’s paranoia when Hitch first arrived, her following Hitch around Twinford and certain he was a gangster plotting to somehow hurt her and her parents. 

In fact, the harder Clancy thinks about this, Hitch and Ruby have about ten months of near-death rescues, paranoia and then that whole dangling-off-a-rooftop fiasco before they began trusting each other as implicitly as they do.

“Oh man.” Clancy manages to get out, unable to look away from Ruby’s wide bruised eyes even as he heard Hitch’s voice drifting down the hall, accompanied by the doctor’s worried tones. “We are in deep trouble.” 

Ruby gave him a look that was so familiar Clancy managed a weak grin. “I know that much, buster. Now, what am I supposed to do?” 

Clancy screws his face up and tries to think of what Ruby, the real Ruby, would do in this situation. 

“Hitch has been around for about a year now. He just manages your parent’s holidays and work and makes sure the house is running okay, I guess.” Clancy was embarrassingly trying to remember what exactly Hitch’s official job description was, aside from being a spy. “He’s a nice guy, he was really worried about you before you woke up. He’s been making sure we all go home and brings us food while we’ve been here. I think he’s handling most of the medicine side of it too.” 

There had been one night, the first night where Ruby had been admitted, where Hitch had stayed awake next to Ruby, sipping his cold coffee, standing so Clancy could nap in the uncomfortable visitor chair. He had sent Sabina and Brant home when Ruby’s condition stabilised but had let Clancy stay—mostly because he knew he couldn’t convince Clancy to leave Ruby’s side. Clancy had woken up once or twice that night to Ruby’s steady breathing and Hitch watching her vitals determinedly, like if he looked away even once her heart would stop. 

The next morning, Sabina and Brant had poured in, Clancy had been groggy and pretending he had gone home for Brant’s sake, and Hitch acted like he’d slept and still managed to sort everything Redfort-related out for them. Clancy was honestly a little bit scared by that act alone, but it just cemented what he’d known: Hitch was nearly as loyal to Ruby as Clancy was himself, and that meant a lot to Clancy Crew. 

“And my parents just decided to hire him? Having a butler isn’t even a trend right now.” Ruby was furrowing her brow so hard Clancy was worried she was going to pull her stitches. 

Clancy very kindly kept his mouth shut despite his curiosity of how much Ruby truly remembered about current social trends. 

“Hitch is cool, I trust him.” Clancy promised her, although Ruby didn’t look sure. “Now can we worry about your head injury? And maybe, what you were doing to break your leg?” 

Ruby had the decency to look a little ashamed of her predicament but was ultimately saved from his mother-henning by Hitch and the doctor returning. 

The next half-hour was a blur of the doctor trying to ascertain what exactly had happened to Ruby’s memory and then Brant and Sabina being understandably distraught at the news. Ruby reassured her parents twice that she still remembered them being her parents before they calmed down enough to retreat to a safe distance. Mrs Digby was far more stoic about the whole thing but kept nudging cookies closer to Ruby, who obediently ate them. 

Finally, Ruby was handed a pair of a crutches and a long list of instructions that Clancy memorised, well aware of Ruby’s track record with self-care. The doctor had concluded that the memory was post-traumatic retrograde amnesia (which sounded like something Clancy would look up in the library to scare himself) but most importantly, wasn’t going to be permanent. 

The doctor wouldn’t give much more of a time frame than ‘temporary’ telling them that Ruby could recover her memories anywhere between a day or a month later. Ruby hadn’t looked too pleased by that, but took the news well, compared to Sabina who still looked faintly teary. Clancy’s own curiosity hoped it would only be a few days until ruby remembered everything. Or at least the bits Clancy didn’t have to lie about: Hitch and spies and what exactly Ruby had been doing for the past ten months. 

They were out of the hospital only three hours after Ruby woke up—70s hospital regulations were more lax than Clancy truly thought they should be but he was glad Ruby would be home where he could keep an eye on her from a more comfortable chair— with the patient herself swinging herself along on crutches. Clancy had cheered her on during her practice laps around the room and now she was trying to see how far she could go in a single movement, swinging her legs so violently Clancy (along with every adult in the vicinity) worried for her other leg and the head injury she still sported. 

Clancy gathered his windbreaker, and the book Hitch had passed him from another visit to the hospital giftshop, and binned all the coffee and hot cocoa cups he and Hitch had worked their way through. The hospital room felt homely now, and Clancy almost felt like he’d miss it, except the only reason he’d stayed was currently hurtling out of hospital if the sound of her crutches tapping the floor meant anything. 

He was just barely out of the lift to follow the Redfort’s and their tagalongs when Hitch put his arm out to stop Clancy following Ruby out of the hospital foyer.  
“I need you to keep an eye out for her.” Hitch told Clancy quietly, even Mrs Digby having drifted from their side and well out of ear shot. 

Clancy glanced between Hitch and Ruby, who was beating both parents off with her crutch as she limped into the car by herself. “I think Ruby’s fine without me.” He pointed out wryly, but Hitch didn’t smile. 

“For her memories returning. LB doesn’t know if she will enlist Ruby again after her injury, it’s hit far too close to home now. She’s always been in danger, but this is serious.” Hitch continued and let go of Clancy’s elbow before he tarted flapping. Clancy managed to control his arms but only because Ruby would know something was wrong if he flapped during a friendly aside with her house manager. 

“You can’t keep Ruby away from Spectrum!” he hissed, horrified at the responsibility of hiding something from Ruby. Hitch knew about his hunches and his ability to keep a secret, but he had no idea how well Ruby Redfort could sniff out one of Clancy Crew’s lies. “What if she asks about Spectrum?”

Hitch didn’t look deterred. “Then you come to me and we’ll work it out. It could be catastrophic if Ruby is reminded of Spectrum before her memories fully return.”

“For her head trauma or for like, the country’s safety?” 

Hitch narrowed his eyes at Clancy for just a second and Clancy grimaced. 

“It’s best for Ruby, and LB has given boss’ orders. At this point, she’s your boss too.” Clancy had never been less reassured by the spy in front of him but eventually nodded, seeing Ruby finally lever herself in the backseat of the car.

“One last thing, kid.” Hitch said and reached into his suit jacket pocket, twisting his arm so no one around them could see what he pulled out. Clancy didn’t even know what he’d pulled out until it was dropped into his hand. Hitch turned away, presumably to drive the Redfort’s home and Clancy watched him for a second before turning his gaze upon whatever Hitch had handed to him. 

Bradley Baker’s watch was lying crumpled in his palm, and he squeezed his hand tightly closed like the watch would reappear on Ruby’s wrist if he didn’t look at it again. 

“If you want a lift, you better hurry up. Ruby’s raring to get out of here.” Hitch called behind him, sounding for all the world like a normal professional people-wrangler and that shocked Clancy’s feet into stumbling forward a little, before his mind caught up and he steadied himself. 

Shoving the watch at the very bottom of his jacket pocket, he numbly helped Hitch lift his bicycle into the boot; said goodbye to Brant who was racing off to some meeting or another, and sat next to Ruby in the backseat, holding her crutches upright while Ruby looked at the streets passing the car windows. 

At one point, on the turn by Amster, she turned her head to look at him, and gave a half-smile, a sort of ‘lost-track-of -what’s-going-on’ quirk of her lips. Clancy smiled back before staring out of the front window, blinking hard. 

The normal Ruby Redfort would know something was up with Clancy and Hitch but this small, sick kid looked like she hardly knew which way was up. 

In his pocket, Bradley Baker’s watch ticked away the seconds of the car ride home. 


	2. with everyone watching us, our every move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “After our last meeting at the Eye Hospital, Ruby admitted that she had told you the majority of her adventures, right up to when she first began working for us. However, I am not interested in asking you to forget what you know, or what you have seen. What I am interested in, is knowing what exactly Agent Redfort was doing in the lead up to her—” 
> 
> LB seemed to pause for a second here, enough that Clancy (who was silently pleased that LB had remembered meeting him weeks ago) noticed it. “Accident.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Mitski's "Once More To See You." which is a bop. The main story title has changed, as I promised on the discord because "Old Friend" is also a bop but just doesn't really fit into the story as I wanted. 
> 
> Interactions with LB in today's chapter, she was such a pain to write, but I'm hoping she's... similiar??   
> AND Clancy meeting Blacker and Froghorn which I was excited about, please let me know if the Froghorn/Blacker/Hitch yearning is audible, I want it to Physically Jump Out, I love them all so much. 
> 
> I'm just scraping the deadline here again today, but this chapter is a chunky 7000 words so I hope you enjoy, reader, and please leave a kudos, comment and bookmark if you liked it!

Clancy left the supermarket, still tucking change back into his wallet and shuffling a bar of chocolate and the soap Nancy liked into the bag he had slung on his shoulder.

He recognised the car parked opposite the supermarket and made sure he was holding everything securely before crossing the street towards it. There’s no sign of a teenager on crutches but Clancy still smiled when he saw someone in the front seat.

He rapped on the window, the carrier bag swinging from his forearm. Hitch looked up, with no sign of surprise, and cranked the window down. It took a moment and Clancy’s smile is a bit forced by the time Hitch can actually speak to him, but that’s the joys of modern car technology.

“I thought I’d find you out here,” Hitch said before Clancy could manage a hello. He had the sudden, irrational urge to check the soles of his shoes for implanted tracking devices but held it off. It was a stupid idea, at least stupid to do it in front of Hitch. He would definitely check later though.

“I’m just picking stuff up for Nancy’s birthday,” Clancy explained, showing off the canvas bag he was holding. “Is Ruby around? I was hoping to see her at some point.”

At last, a smile makes its way across Hitch’s face. “She’s not with me at the moment but I can take you back to Greenwood if you’re not busy.”

Clancy beamed and nodded. It would save him the trek up to Cedarwood Drive, the only issue was… “I just haven’t got a doughnut for her.”

Hitch outright laughed, but Clancy wasn’t quite sure if it was with him or _at_ him. “I’m sure she’ll forgive you just this once. We might even be able to pick one up on the way.”

He jerked his head at the passenger seat next to him. “Jump in kid, you look like you’re going to fold under that bag.”

Clancy’s never actually had the front seat before, simply because he could never win against Minnie in the fight for the rare opportunity of the front seat, and Ruby always got shotgun in Hitch’s car.

“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?” Clancy asked when his bag is stowed in front of him, his knee jigging up and down rapidly.

Hitch doesn’t look away from the road, but Clancy can kind of feel the scepticism coming off him. “I have a feeling it won’t be, but what is funny?”

“Being on this side of the glass,” Clancy stated. Hitch actually looked away from the road at that, to look at Clancy carefully, not in anger or real confusion, just curiosity. “Y’know, being the one who knows everything about Spectrum and what you do and ‘The Plan’.” He explained, pulling his hands from under his knees to make quotation marks in the air.

Hitch allowed a smile at that, eyes back on the road even though Clancy’s willing to bet all shotgun privileges that the car is actually self-driving, like those cool ones on films and documentaries, promised to be released at the peak of technology. Sometime in the 1990s.

“Redfort may have told you everything about what she did, but you telling her that she’s a secret agent could hurt her right now and set back her recovery.” Hitch reminded him, and Clancy looked out of the window so Hitch couldn’t see he was biting his lip. 

“I won’t tell her that she’s an agent right now.” He said very carefully, having learnt a lot from Minny trying to wriggle her way out of curfews and punishments.

“Kid, I know when someone’s trying to avoid the subject.” 

“So, when are you leaving?” Clancy said instead, avoiding the subject of avoiding the subject, sounding more confident than he’s feeling.

“Leaving?” Hitch replied, the indicator flicked on and off as he turned onto Maple. 

“Yeah, Ruby isn’t an agent anymore, you don’t need to look after her anymore.” Hitch scoffed at that. 

“Ruby still needs looking after, whatever happened a week ago just proves that even more. And now, all the bad guys know exactly what she looks like, and maybe even that she’s beaten up and amnesic. I’m sticking around until she’s healed up and then we’ll take it from there.” 

“At this point, I’m not sure the Redfort’s can live without you.” Clancy grinned. He’s not even totally sure how the Redfort’s managed before Hitch.

Hitch gave him a distracted smile. “They won’t have to for at least a little while. Especially if this goes well.” 

The road sign for Maple swung past again and Clancy’s knee abruptly stopped shaking. “This?” He asked carefully. Hitch took his time replying, turning left twice more before he opened his mouth. 

“You’re going to be doing a little… meet and greet.” Hitch said slowly like Clancy’s going to spook and jump out of the moving car. 

Clancy pointedly dredged up the memory of seeing the speck of Hitch’s helicopter lower itself into the flames on Wolf Paw Mountain and how he heard later that it was Hitch himself dangling from a rope for the sole aim of rescuing Ruby, who Clancy Crew hadn’t even been able to save. He sighed. 

“If you weren’t so cryptic about everything you said, maybe Ruby wouldn’t think you were the villain every time she meets you.” Clancy told Hitch seriously. Hitch finally turned right, away from Maple. “Why are we going in circles?” 

“Because there was a car behind us the first time.” Hitch explained somewhat reluctantly, guiding them into a side alley so narrow Clancy isn’t sure if he would be able to open the car door and squeeze out. The brick walls rose high above them and had no windows for the nosier citizens of Twinford to look out at Clancy’s last resting place.

“Where are we going? Really?” Clancy asked. The car kept moving slowly through the alley which seemed to be narrowing until the wing mirrors were just barely scraping the brick. 

“Well kid, it isn’t to get doughnuts.” Hitch quipped, seemingly having fun as he stared intently at the rear-view mirror. The ground below the car dropped until Clancy was staring down a ramp, dimly lit with fluorescent lights along the walls. 

Hitch accelerated and the car sped down the white-walled ramp, the lights flashing past Clancy’s window. It would have been achingly cool, if Clancy had not been trying to decide where the best place would be to throw up in Hitch’s car with the least amount of trouble. 

* * *

A certain amount of time later, Clancy opened his eyes and stepped out of the car, now stood in a massive subterranean carpark. There were several other cars around, and no markings on the walls to indicate what floor they were on. Clancy had a feeling he knew what was going on for the first time. 

“This is Spectrum, isn’t it?” He asked and his voice echoed around the whole area. 

Hitch nodded, not looking too impressed with Clancy’s detective skills. It wasn’t his fault that Hitch was used to Ruby working every puzzle out in three seconds flat, it was about time the guy realised what normal teenagers were like. At least Ruby would have given him an encouraging smile when he finally caught on. 

Hitch walked in a direction that Clancy assumed was the elevators and Clancy jogged to catch up. It occurred to Clancy that maybe he should’ve ironed his shirt today or worn matching socks but he barely had time to glance at his hair in the mirrored reflection of the elevator before Hitch was striding off down a corridor with splashes of bright green across it.

Clancy hopped from one foot to the other as he checked the soles of his shoes for mud, a habit that had been rather firmly pressed upon him by his parents, even if there was nowhere to put his shoes if they were muddy. What was worse, walking barefoot down a secret-spy corridor with lavish white carpet or tracking mud down it? He’d ask Ruby later, but for the moment his feet were thankfully clean.

Hitch hadn’t waited for him, but then Hitch didn’t have to worry about mud. He probably had high-tech shoes that made mud slide off and had those hidden roller skates Ruby had once. Looking around, Clancy recognised the halls from Ruby’s descriptions and began making a concerted effort to remember where they had emerged from and where they were going.

“So, who am I meeting and greeting?” Clancy asked, hoping for nonchalant and instead sounding strained. He didn’t care what kids his age, or even what most adults had to say about him and his unique style choices, but a bunch of professional adults who were trained to shoot first, ask questions later? That was a whole different story. Half of the spies here made Ruby uneasy or at least annoyed. Clancy didn’t stand a chance. He just hoped he was meeting the cool spies. 

“The boss.” Clancy’s eyes widened and he wondered whether it was exactly appropriate to be this excited about finally meeting LB. He’d seen her briefly on the rooftop back on New Years', but they hadn’t spoken, on account of him being minorly concussed and pretending not to know anything about her. Regardless of how much the Spectrum boss disliked Clancy as a threat or a blab, Clancy thought she was supremely cool.

“And you’re going to pretend that you know nothing about anything Spectrum, capiche? Whatever Ruby has let slip, don’t bring anything up.” 

Clancy nodded. He didn’t have the loyalty to Hitch that he did to Ruby to not blab, but he wasn’t going to do anything to put Ruby in danger.

“Should I know where I am? Or who Ruby is? What’s the plan?” He realised as he glanced behind him that the colours were changing so subtly, he hadn’t noticed they were in blue until they were teal. 

Hitch looked like he was beginning to regret the whole incident at this point, but like he was still trying to be polite about the mistake he had made. “You were nearly killed by the Count. On multiple occasions.”

Clancy winced at the reminder. He’d been there, seen it, lived it, and would’ve bought the T-Shirt if there had been a handy vendor nearby.

“You are one of the few who has been up close and personal with him, LB’s just going to want to know if you’ve seen him since.”

Hitch pulled up short outside a plain-looking office door, and Clancy stumbled forward a few steps before he could rein his legs under control and turn back.

“Is this it?” Clancy asked with some dread creeping into his voice.

Hitch knocked neatly on the door twice and gave Clancy a grin. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’re much politer than Ruby in any case.”

“You’re coming in with me, right?” Clancy blurted as Hitch seized the doorknob.

“You’ll be fine.” Hitch repeated and swung the door open. Clancy internally cursed him out. He was probably going to go off to the gadget room and or have a top-secret conversation about the security of the country instead of being accused of jeopardising the country’s security like Clancy was. Or go and flirt with his “coding boyfriends” as Ruby liked to say. He wasn’t sure he was going to be lucky enough to be introduced to the boyfriends after this conversation.

Clancy scourged up his Ambassador-Son smile and manners and stepped into the room, hoping whoever sat inside hadn’t seen the prior fear on his face.

It seemed Clancy was in luck for once because the woman at the desk didn’t look up until he was stood in front of her desk with an increasingly brittle smile. He waited for her to finish writing her sentence in patient silence as he glanced around the blank white room. She immediately began a new sentence without hesitation and Clancy wondered if Hitch had opened the wrong door. There hadn’t been a label on it, could he get out without the woman noticing?

“Hi. I’m Clancy Crew.” He said finally, sticking his hand out for a handshake like every adult at every party always wanted.

LB—because who else could she be? Ruby had complained often enough that Clancy could’ve recognised her at the Dime a Dozen— placed her pen down delicately.

“I know.” She replied. She didn’t take his hand and Clancy pulled it back and behind his back so he wouldn’t start flapping. “Take a seat.”

Clancy took a seat, leaning forward to take quick peeks of whatever she’d been writing before he entered. The rest of the room wasn’t nearly as interesting, instead it looked rather like what his father wanted their living room to be like when dignitaries and news crews came over. Soulless and boring. 

“Um, Hitch brought me here?” He added after an extra second of silence, trying his best to pretend like a kid who been kidnapped from the street by a stranger he should only peripherally know.

LB looked up at him with an unimpressed look. Clancy kept the smile from slipping and decided that Ruby had to give him a milkshake for putting him through this, even if she didn’t know where he was or what had happened. He just deserved a milkshake.

“Clancy, I am well-aware of what you know about me and the rest of Spectrum thanks to a certain Ruby Redfort.” Clancy started to open his mouth to protest but LB held a hand up to stop him.

“After our last meeting at the Eye Hospital, Ruby admitted that she had told you the majority of her adventures, right up to when she first began working for us. However, I am not interested in asking you to forget what you know, or what you have seen. What I am interested in, is knowing what exactly Agent Redfort was doing in the lead up to her—” LB seemed to pause for a second here, enough that Clancy (who was silently pleased that LB had remembered meeting him weeks ago) noticed it. “Accident.”

“First, it’s not Ruby’s fault I know everything, I was sticking my nose in it first.” Clancy said in a rush before LB could cut him off. “I’m never going to blab, and I’m not going to do anything to put her in danger.”

LB pressed two fingers to her temple like she was warding off a headache. Clancy kept talking.

“I don’t _know_ what Ruby was doing in the days before the accident. I was with her the afternoon before she turned up in the hospital and she wasn’t acting any different! We watched some films, I biked out with her to her house and watched her get inside before turning around. She said her plans for the night were just homework and then sleeping.” LB was nodding along, but Clancy wasn’t sure if it was in approval or if she was just looking for him to shut up. His foot was bouncing up and down insistently but if LB didn’t want people to be nervous, she shouldn’t make them nervous. He tried to make it as subtle as possible and hoped the bulk of the desk covered it from LB.

“Sabina thought Ruby was at a drama club in the evening, and I’ve just been agreeing until Ruby woke up and could explain it all. Hitch thought she was staying the night at mine, he called me just before he went out looking for her. I told him she had left at some point—about ten I think? —and I only heard from anyone when he had already taken her to hospital.”

LB pulled a notepad of plain white paper towards her and made a quick note. Clancy didn’t get a glimpse of it before she was pushing it back to the side and focusing wholly on him instead. Clancy had stared down a fair few villains at his tender age of 13 but LB had a knack of making people on edge and he knew whatever he said now would be pivotal in Ruby’s recovery or even continued employment.

“You don’t think it was an accident.” It wasn’t a question and by the looks of it, LB knew it.

“I don’t.” She acquiesced and Clancy nodded, pressing his lips together. He’d been thinking about it hard since he first heard from Hitch that Ruby wasn’t at home and her tracker had gone off.

“You think it was the Count.” Clancy himself thought it was the Count. He had seen the man plummet from the rooftop, a fall which had killed Casey Morgan only minutes later. When Hitch was back on the rooftop, he had pulled Clancy clumsily away from the edge of the rooftop and said “You don’t want to see. It’s only Casey. He’s gone.” Clancy had no wish to see what remained after a 33-story freefall and had distracted Olive later on with her doll when the paramedics arrived to cart a sheet-covered stretcher away.

LB nodded slowly. “But he’s presumed dead and there’s no evidence unless you remember anything Ruby could’ve possibly said?”

Clancy shook his head somewhat shamefully. Ruby had run off, once again, to fight the whole world alone, without scarcely a hint to Clancy or, to a lesser extent Hitch. The rooftop on New Years' was one of the worst things they’d gone through together and somehow Ruby still didn’t trust him enough to mention what she was doing.

“I don’t think Ruby thought it was the Count.” Clancy voiced the hunch he’d been feeling since Ruby woke up. LB’s eyebrows raised and she tilted her head towards him. Clancy hoped he wasn’t wrong on this, but kindly, he wasn’t often wrong. “I think, I know that if she was expecting the Count to appear, she would have told Hitch. But she didn’t, so whatever happened to her that night, she wasn’t expecting it to happen. I don’t know if she was at the old town hall on purpose or because she was following something else or she was tricked, but I think the Count was the last thing Ruby expected that night.” He took a breath while LB noted something else down. Something carved on the side of her pen caught the white light as she wrote, and his head drifted sideways to read it properly. His head shot up straight fast enough for his neck to crack when LB looked at him again.

“Is there anything else? Anymore ‘hunches’?”

Ruby must’ve been thorough when telling LB everything about Clancy and he was surprised the head honcho of Spectrum was willing to listen to him. He felt helpless, they were turning to him for help, but his best friend hadn’t even trusted him enough to leave a message before she went to get kidnapped.

“I don’t think the Count is dead.” He added, wracking his brain for anything more. He’d been turning ideas and theories over in his head for days, but nothing was connecting. “When Ruby gets her memory back, she’ll remember what happened, but I might be able to figure out what she was doing or at least why she was at Old Town Hall.”

LB was looking faintly pained, and Clancy remembered, belatedly, another set of best friends, one of which had forgotten the other and the other who was desperately holding out for their best friend to remember and heal and come back to them.

Now Clancy felt faintly pained.

Remembering Bradley, however painful, had reminded Clancy of a certain topic he needed to bring up with Hitch. He knew acutely that LB would have the same knowledge, if not more, but he also knew there were things he would not remind LB of.

“Crew, do not—I repeat— do not go to Old Town Hall or start poking your nose around to find out what had happened.” LB spoke through gritted teeth and Clancy felt his face pale a little. “There are agents already investigating and monitoring the situation. You are not trained and are not ever going to be ready to act the spy.”

Clancy had to admit that that hurt a little. He swallowed the nervousness determinedly and nodded. He didn’t make any promises.

LB levelled him with a look, well-aware of what he was saying. Or what he hadn’t said. She breathed evenly through her nose and nodded.

“That’s all at the moment. Thank you.”

It took Clancy a second to process the dismissal and shot to his feet quickly.

“What do I do if I remember anything else?” He stopped just before the door and turned on his heel to look back at LB, who was already writing again.

“Hope it’s not important. Talk to Hitch, he’s your only point of contact to us.”

“What if I can’t get to Hitch? And it’s important?” LB raised a hand slowly and pointed directly at Clancy which scared him more than he liked to admit. After a second he looked down and saw exactly where LB was pointing: the Bradley Baker watch.

Clancy flushed with some embarrassment, but LB didn’t look up.

“Crew, one more thing.” She added right at the last possible second before he grabbed the doorknob. He stopped and swivelled back to her, wondering if maybe this was a Queen of England situation and he had to leave the room without turning his back on her.

“I see why Redfort and you are friends. Keep your eyes open.” She told her pad of paper and Clancy couldn’t stop the grin spreading across his face.

“Thanks LB.”

“Get out.”

Clancy got out.

* * *

Hitch was standing against the wall directly opposite Clancy when he left and thankfully LB’s parting comment had wiped the pleased look off his face.

Clancy shut the door as carefully as he could without slamming it and focused his attention back on Hitch with a smile. “I think it went well.”

Hitch guffawed a bit more than was strictly necessary. “Ruby says that every time and then I have to apologise for half the things she said in there.”

Clancy was too busy making a face at that to realise that Hitch was striding off down the hallway again. Clancy was glad his legs were long enough to keep up with him, he must have to slow down for Ruby’s legs like Clancy did.

“I do think it went well. She said she thought it was the Count and I thought it was the Count, but I don’t think Ruby thought it was the Count when she went to do whatever she did.” Hitch’s lips turned down firmly.

“Where are we going anyway?” Clancy changed the subject, looking around to track the change from green to greenish-yellow.

“Where do you think we’re going?” Hitch asked like it was a game and Clancy fought the urge to bring up the coding boyfriends.

“It’s not back to the car, so maybe the canteen? You did promise me a doughnut.” Clancy was trying his best to lighten the mood and he caught the edge of a smile when he turned back to Hitch.

“I’ll get you one doughnut. Between Ruby and you, I’m absolutely extorted for baked goods.” Hitch told him.

Clancy didn’t see anything significant about the room Hitch stopped outside of again but managed to stop in time to enter behind Hitch.

Inside were two men, both engrossed in something on their respective desks. Clancy was too short to look over Hitch’s shoulder, but the bigger man stepped aside soon enough to clap a hand on the shoulder of the man with long hair in greeting. The other man, in a woollen sweater vest that looked like it came from Clancy’s own wardrobe, spun around in his desk chair to get a look at whoever came in and sent a pile of paper straight onto the floor.

Clancy realised, perhaps a bit unkindly, that this was Blacker. He looked excited at the sight of Hitch, but it dimmed ever so slightly when he caught sight of the thirteen-year-old child behind him.

Wrong kid. Clancy was used to people looking for Ruby and only seeing him and being disappointed. He was used to it, plus he was sure he was the last person the two expected to come through their door, except for maybe the Count himself.

“Blacker, we needed those.” Froghorn protested from the other side of the room, forgoing any greeting to Clancy, and Blacker waved a hand dismissively at him, instead jumping up to shake Clancy’s hand.

“They weren’t in any order before they fell Miles, I’ll sort them out later. It’s good to meet you, I’m Blacker!” Clancy shook his hand enthusiastically. Even if he wasn’t Ruby, Blacker made a good effort to look pleased to see him.

“I’m Clancy. Uh, actually maybe Crew?” Clancy realised maybe he needed a spy name, but it was far too late now. In fact, Blacker now knew _more_ about him than if he’d just kept his mouth shut. “It’s nice to meet you. Ruby talks a lot about you guys a lot.”

Hitch sighed and Clancy realised his second mistake. It wasn’t his fault Blacker looked so open and trustworthy! The agent didn’t seem to take much notice though and finally released his hand.

“Are we hiring _more_ children?” Froghorn asked Hitch, although Clancy felt he saw a bit of disappointment that it wasn’t Ruby.

Hitch picked his way over what were probably highly classified papers to the coffee-pot on the side table. “No more children are being hired. Crew is just here to talk to LB about what exactly happened.”

Clancy watched Blacker’s eyes track Hitch across the room. “Your mug is underneath, I washed it for you last time.” He called after him and Hitch automatically felt under the side table. The mug he pulled out was familiar and Clancy realised where he’d seen it before after a quick glance at the other desks. He had cycled out to a garage sale with Ruby at some point late autumn in between her missions, looking for new telephones for her and the least fashionable looking clothes for him.

They had only found a patterned shirt for Clancy and a rotary phone that simply wasn’t interesting enough for Ruby, but they had both been distracted by a massive collection of novelty mugs before they could even think to be disappointed by the poor phone and shirt selection.

Ruby had spent the better part of an hour searching out the best mugs. And by best, Clancy meant the worst. Clancy had known who the mug shaped like a frog was for before Ruby could even smirk at him, and it still sat on Froghorn’s desk, albeit stuffed with pens. Blacker’s one wasn’t quite as obviously an insult, but the brigh bubbly text on the side simply begged the drinker not to drink it.

Hitch’s one announced the holder as the “World’s Best Dad!” and Ruby had wiped away tears of laughter as she paid for it.

“Make me one?” Blacker asked, holding his mug out to Hitch who took it without hesitation.

“Of course.” He murmured and stirred in milk and sugar, carrying it back over to him and snagging a very plain and boring mug from Froghorn’s desk to make one for him too.

Blacker’s eyes were shining as he accepted his cup, giving Clancy a sideways grin. “Since he’s been a butler, he’s vastly improved his coffee-making skills.” He told him secretively and Froghorn snorted in a way that Clancy honestly had expected from the man.

“He’s not a butler,” Froghorn defended the house manager right up until his coffee cup was safe on his desk and then cradled in his hands. “He’s a house-keeper.”

Hitch shook his head as he walked back to his own cup of coffee but there was definitely a smile pulling at his cheeks even as he sipped from his strongly brewed black coffee.

Blacker leaned out of his desk chair to start collecting up the papers, and Clancy dropped to his knees to help, eyes shamelessly grazing every page as casually as he could manage.

Blacker exclaimed and pressed a piece of paper towards Clancy who fumbled to grab it without creasing the other pages he held.

“That one’s important! That goes on top!” Blacker explained and Clancy nodded automatically, arranging all subsequent sheets under it. He had a few seconds to scan the sheet, committing as much of it to memory as possible. Sure, it wasn’t Ruby Redfort levels of memory (… that was ‘pre-accident Redfort levels of memory’) but Clancy had a feeling that he would remember the page well as he read it.

_“The Subliminal and Supraliminal: Signals intended to pass below the conscious mind to be perceived and acted upon unconsciously.”_

The following sheets had more and more definitions of subliminal messaging, examples of how it was used, and even supposed studies exploring it. Clancy zoned completely out of the conversation going on above his head between Hitch and Froghorn while he distractedly shuffled papers into a pile while reading them upside down.

_“Supraliminal messages will involve a conscious and subconscious influence on the participant, with a stimulus that is presented on the conscious level and holds a subsequent unconscious impact on behaviour—such as causing a participant to think of words and concepts associated with the presented topic.”_

_“The subliminal will not be recognised on a conscious level (See. File 00286- Fort Lee Experiment into Subliminal Messaging) but will still unconsciously influence the participant.”_

There was one particularly out of place journal article about the effects of hypnosis on the retrieval of certain long-term memories, but Clancy wasted a few seconds trying to guess the meaning of ‘ameliorate’ in the first few sentences to get much further. Only Ruby and whatever dusty scientist who wrote the article knew what that meant. Clancy was certain that he wouldn’t even find it in his dictionary. Frankly, he was disappointed that there was no mention of top-secret brain-washing techniques and mind-control. Maybe Froghorn had all the interesting stuff on his desk.

He only realised that maybe someone was talking to him while he nosed about in their top-secret documents when Blacker reached out and gently took the sheaf of papers Clancy had amassed from him.

Clancy’s hands tried to tighten on the papers, to resist, having not had nearly enough time to read them but realised that he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near them, and he pulled his hands back quickly.

Blacker didn’t seem to have noticed and dropped the pile on the end of his desk again, like he didn’t care if they fell again, despite how close to the edge they still were. Froghorn seemed to be having the same thought process as Clancy, even if Blacker sent him the other agent a smug look for having cleaned up the mess he had made.

Hitch was still leant against the wall but was watching Clancy with slightly narrowed eyes, looking faintly interested in whatever had been said. Clancy could not guess at whatever they had been discussing before and shot Blacker a helpless grin. The agent seemed to take pity on him and repeated his question.

“So, then Crew, what did you see?” Clancy shot a look at Hitch to try and gauge whether this was sensitive information but at the butler’s blank face decided he could tell.

“Nothing. Ruby wasn’t acting weird before she left, at all. She came over for a movie marathon that afternoon because the channel was showing them all as a kind of back-to-back special. I watched her get inside the house and the next thing I know Hitch is on the phone asking what I’ve done with Ruby.” None of the agents in the room looked particularly pleased with Clancy’s insight, who had been wracking his brain for more details since Hitch called.

Blacker had a slow drink from his mug, while Froghorn put his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

“Well, we aren’t detectives.” Blacker eventually stated, trying to be kind. “But if Ruby was onto something and didn’t want you to know, you simply won’t know. Maybe she realised something just after you left, and there was no way for her to call.”

Clancy could pick several holes in that and he wasn’t a detective either.

“If you remember anything, you can contact me on that.” Blacker pointed at the watch on Clancy’s wrist. He clapped a hand over it guiltily like he’d stolen it. Froghorn made a displeased noise behind Clancy and he didn’t bother wiping his face of annoyance when Clancy turned to face him.

“Another child spy.” He said pointedly to Hitch. “Because the last one went so well.”

“Ruby is on track to recover her memories. She’s getting stuff back, it takes time.” Clancy argued, Froghorn looked at him with uninterested eyes.

“It’s not whether Ruby remembers everything or not, it’s about another child being caught up in governmental-level work.” Hitch explained.

Clancy’s mouth twisted down at the corners. He didn’t know how exactly to explain that he didn’t really want to be a spy—his hands shook too much, and it was only Ruby at his side during most of their adventures that had kept him upright and not running a mile away from the problem—but he didn’t want them to throw him out if he wasn’t going to be useful.

“I’m here for Ruby.” He said seriously, pulling his shoulders back so he didn’t look five-foot-four flat.

The frown fell from Hitch’s face and he chuckled. Froghorn had returned to reading from the papers in front of him, in the middle of retying his ponytail (despite the fact it had been sleek and tight when Clancy had walked in anyway) but getting distracted by writing down notes seemingly as they occurred to him.

Clancy glanced from Froghorn who had his pen caught between his teeth as he finally tightened the hairband, Hitch who was pouring himself a second cup of coffee, and Blacker who appeared to be lost in thought. He had a feeling there wouldn’t be a better time for the discussion he needed to have, and he took a deep breath.

“Are we sure it was an accident?” He announced to the room, hearing Froghorn’s pen drop to the table as the man gave up on trying to work. Hitch had looked up sharply—rather off-puttingly if he was being honest— as Clancy inhaled, obviously used to Ruby prefacing every bad decision with the same action. He had a furrow knitted between his eyebrows and didn’t quite look impressed at Clancy’s new theory.

“She had a…” Blacker motioned at his own forehead vaguely, although truthfully he hadn’t seen Ruby’s head wound himself.

“Yes, but are we sure that’s caused her to lose all of her memories? She forgot who she was, a general case of retrograde amnesia will usually, in most circumstances, wipe out the most recent memories such as the event that caused it and maybe even up to a few months before, not her entire life.” Clancy’s hands were knotted into tangles behind his back, but he managed to get through the majority of the speech without stammering or pausing. He hadn’t quite succeeded in taking a full breath of air since he began speaking but that was the price to pay. “Ruby didn’t know her own name, let alone who did it to her, it might all be a set-up or a framing.”

Blacker was looking thoughtful but Froghorn appeared ready to tear apart Clancy’s hastily thrown together idea.

“What exactly would cause her to lose all of her memory then?” He asked snidely, but there was something behind the twist of his lips like he was trying to arrange all the puzzle pieces before he started hoping.

Clancy shot a guilty look at Hitch before he said his next bit, but the man just had his head tilted slightly and nodded at him to continue.

“Well, Spectrum has a, um, history of playing with memories, implanting and removing them.” He explained, mostly to Blacker and Froghorn, as Hitch knew exactly what history he was talking about, having been a major role in it. “Specific Memory Extraction and that… stuff.”

Froghorn nodded as if it was beginning to make sense. “You think someone in Spectrum wanted to remove all of Ruby’s memories?” He seemed awfully like he wanted to make a quip about wanting to lose his own memories of a certain thirteen-year-old code-cracker but it never came to his lips, probably something to do with Hitch in the room.

Blacker leant around Clancy slightly to look at Froghorn properly. “After everything at New Years’, it’s not impossible.” Froghorn’s nose screwed up but he nodded in assent.

Clancy snuck another look at Hitch who was staring into the bottom of ‘World’s Best Dad’ cup with an unreadable look on his face.

“Up until a little while ago she was the only one who knew what exactly the Count looked like, so it might be helpful to take her out of the picture entirely. She knows a lot about all the villains and is also pretty effective—” he gave a strained smile around the room, “No offence guys.”

Blacker waved a hand to brush him off but Froghorn’s mouth twisted again.

“We don’t have access to that technology anymore.” Hitch spoke up finally and Clancy trod on the toe of one foot with the other to avoid it anxiously tapping in front of the professional adults. “At least not the technology to remove memories.”

“Is it possible that anyone else does?” Blacker asked, swivelling in half circles in his chair like he didn’t mind if he fidgeted in front of the others.

Hitch shrugged. It wasn’t a gesture Clancy saw him do often. “It’s possible I suppose, but the Count never saw Ruby’s irises and lacks the Lucite tag to attempt to retrieve the information himself.”

Clancy glanced between all three men but none of them seemed to know the right answer. Hitch’s answer was logical, but Clancy could still see Ruby’s scared and confused face from where she was smothered in hospital sheets as she asked who and where she was.

Hitch caught Clancy’s eye, waiting until Clancy held the eye-contact before he spoke. “If I hear anything about SME, I’ll investigate it immediately, however, it seems… improbable. She was hit very hard and has a major concussion. It isn’t an uncommon injury and the doctors, both at Twinford General and Spectrum, believe it simply is a slightly unusual case of head trauma.”

“She’s not exactly the average child.” Froghorn drawled. Spoken by anyone else his comment would be a compliment.

“It was a good point,” Blacker informed Clancy, smiling encouragingly at him from his chair. “And I’m sure Hitch will look into it, but without the Lucite key, it shouldn’t be possible.”

Clancy nodded, sighing heavily. He thought he might’ve been onto something, and he had to admit that he wanted Ruby’s memory loss to be caused by SME. At least memories removed by SME could be recovered to some extent. If this was just a common, normal head injury then Ruby was going to have to recall it all on her own, which left a lot more up to chance than Clancy would like.

Hitch placed his mug down, looking somewhat guilty at the lack of washing-up. Blacker, who hadn’t looked at his work once since Clancy had crashed in, saw and smiled.

“I’ll sort that if you have places to shoot off to.” He told him and Hitch smiled back in a way that Clancy hadn’t seen the house-manager ever do before. He cast his gaze to Froghorn, at least hoping to fake vomit at him but instead Froghorn was watching the other two with something Clancy couldn’t identify. Clancy tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, hoping it would all be over quickly.

Hitch cleared his throat and made his way to the door, surprising Clancy enough that he looked back at the room properly.

“We should probably be heading off,” Hitch said, and there was a touch of awkwardness as he glanced between the coders and Clancy. Clancy nearly smirked with the thought of Ruby’s reaction to Hitch and his “boyfriends”, but it faded when he remembered that Ruby didn’t remember anything about Hitch, boyfriends or not.

He fell into line behind Hitch, giving Blacker a friendly wave and Froghorn a slightly more wary one.

“It was nice meeting you guys!” He told them, Blacker positively beaming at him while Froghorn just nodded distractedly at him.

Clancy didn’t miss how Hitch’s hand lingered just slightly on Blacker’s back as he walked past and paused to glance over Froghorn’s shoulder at his work while Clancy said his goodbyes.

“Wait, just before you go.” Blacker called, holding out a bag with a very familiar logo on it. “One for you and one for Ruby, on me.”

Clancy took the bag of doughnuts gratefully. He could head to Ruby’s to just sit with her, forgetting her scary boss and the accident she’d been through. Maybe she would have some new memory for him to confirm or debunk because he knew she wasn’t leaving her memories well alone like she’d been warned, but worrying at them every moment, like Bug with a chew toy.

“Thanks, Blacker. For the record, I didn’t think you were the mole when all that was going on.” 

In fairness to the unshakeableness of Blacker, he laughed, stretching his arm behind his head to scratch at the back of his neck somewhat awkwardly. “Yeah, she had her reasons for thinking that. I’m glad she didn’t try pushing me off a roof to prove it, and that paranoia seems to be serving her well.”

He paused for a split second, thinking of the time that her paranoia hadn’t served her except to deliver her to hospital. “Hey Crew, stay safe. I don’t think you’re as likely as Ruby to go charging into danger, but you know exactly how dangerous it is around here at the moment.”

Clancy nodded, once again not making any promises.

“And you,” Blacker pointed a finger at Hitch who had the decency to look surprised for once. “Look after our Ruby for us, yeah? Check in soon.”

“And for the love of God, go to sleep for once,” Froghorn added, looking for a second like he was going to playfully punch Hitch’s shoulder but shying away from the movement before he’d even really reached out. “You keep telling me coffee is no substitute for sleep.”

Hitch looked outraged and Clancy couldn’t help from laughing on his way to the door.

“You can’t boss me around,” Hitch was complaining even as he grinned. “I get no respect around here I’m telling you.”

Clancy waved one last time at them as he was ushered out of the door and took a few confident steps in the direction of the car park.

Hitch watched him go with some trepidation in his eyes. “Great, another one desperate to go and learn everything about the place. I should’ve blindfolded you like LB suggested.”

Clancy faltered, his grip on his doughnut bag loosening before he rescued it. “LB said what?”

Hitch laughed at his shock but refused to budge on the subject. “Come on, don’t you want to see Ruby?” he called over his shoulder, and Clancy felt a bit of vindication at the knowledge that he had been going the right way.

“Sure but… did LB really say that? You’re joking, right? Hitch?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so not even an hour before I posted this I made some dumb Froghorn/Blacker joke on the discord server and realised that Clancy must have already met Blacker as Blacker was at the Eye Hospital on NYE, and I made it super clear that Clancy remembered LB from the same interaction in this story.   
> I have literally no excuse, except I thought Blacker immediately being a disaster and Clancy going "Yes, that is Blacker. I have heard all about Blacker" would be funny and I couldn't bring myself to write it out. That's my bad, guys and I'm sorry. Just... close your eyes and ignore it. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed anyways and please leave a kudos/comment/bookmark!!


	3. i'll talk about nothing baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was a long stream of letters that didn’t make any sense and Clancy translated it as quickly as he could. 
> 
> “Got a bad hunch. New art show on corner of East Arch. Looks like our friend is back.”
> 
> Clancy stared at it in concern for a moment and then quietly refolded it to place on the desk. He wasn’t quite sure what to say about all of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First update of the year! There will be another chapter some time this week as I had to split this chapter up because I had to shoehorn in some Hitch&Ruby vibes (and for the timeline to make sense AGAIN) before the next scene.   
> So lots of dialogue! Character development! Plot development! Everything in this chapter was only meant to pad out the Local Cool Kids Take Over Local Establishment scene but then I blinked and it was 1am and I had another 3,000 words in my word document. If you prefer the 7000-8000 word long chapters let me know here on or on the discord but that feels WAY too long to read and I wrote it. 
> 
> Title for this chapter is slightly bastardised from "Old Friend" by Mitski. Was going to bastardised to "I'll take a banana milk and talk about nothing." but didn't quite work out. 
> 
> Please let me know if you enjoyed even if it's just a kudos! I really appreciate it! To my UKers I hope lockdown is treating you well, you aren't overwhelmed and you stay safe and my discord dms are always open for a chat. To those who aren't in the UK, I hope you are safe and well and similar invitation to my discord dms!

Ruby started the laborious process of tidying her room without two working legs. Most of it could be done by scooting her swivel chair around the room, picking up books and dirty clothes and single shoes that had been discarded. Mrs Digby had graciously begun to make her bed and take dirty cups and plates downstairs for her, but she had drawn the line at picking up Ruby’s laundry.

Ruby was slowly making her way across the room with a lapful of old socks and trousers towards the laundry chute when the chair got stuck on a gap in the floorboards and nearly tipped her out of it completely. It hadn’t helped that she was more focused on a scrap of paper she had unearthed with a few scribbled drawings and a paragraph of writing that seemed to be more abbreviations and acronyms than full words.

Ruby cursed, last Monday’s t-shirt falling from her lap as she tried to free the stuck wheel. It was far more difficult than it needed to be, and she half-heartedly kicked it with her unplastered foot. The board shifted another fraction of an inch and she leaned down to force it back into lying flat until she could nag Hitch into fixing it for her.

Looking closer at it, the floorboard seemed purposely loose, with three missing nails so it could swivel out of the way. She pulled it up with more ease than she would have thought possible and nearly fell out of the chair for a second time when it moved aside to reveal a whole dragon’s hoard of yellow notebooks. Each had a tiny number in its top corner and were piled deep into the dead space between the ceiling of the roof below and floor of her room. Ruby had a rather good guess of how many notebooks exactly were stuffed in the hidey-hole by the miniature “624” on its cover.

Ruby closed her eyes for a brief second, hoped that this was not a hidden stash of fanfiction from her crime shows and pulled the top one out of the pile, pushing all the clothes from her lap so she could focus on the book.

A quick flip through showed hundreds of sentences each dated and timed meticulously.

“Saturday 6th September: Cecil Hawthorne got a new car for his eighteenth. He’s on his ~~sixth~~ seventh lap of the block in it.”

Monday 3rd October: Hitch gave me his second KitKat that fell out of the vending machine today. Think he’s trying to make up for zoning out during my explanation of the difference between Old and New-Age Witch Hunts. I didn’t tell him I saw him kick the machine to get it to fall.”

It went on in this fashion for pages and pages until the final page stated.

“Thursday 12th November: Lots of things beginning to take shape. Out of space in this book. Bought notebook 625.”

Ruby shuffled herself down to the floor to properly rifle through the books on the floor but although she could track all the way back until the very first book, 625 was simply not there.

Conveniently this missed out just about every memory Ruby had in the lead up to her accident. Even if she read each and every page of the books, she wouldn’t know why exactly she had been at the Old Town Hall. Ruby closed the floorboard firmly this time, keeping notebook 624 tucked firmly under her arm. Even if it did not reveal the weeks before her accident, it seemed to have some useful information.

Now she only had to finish tidying her room.

* * *

Clancy knocked on Ruby’s bedroom door, having run up the stairs to her room as soon as Hitch pulled up outside.

He was still holding the doughnuts and held them up victoriously when he pushed the door open.

Ruby looked confused when she saw him standing there, and Clancy realised that he hadn’t actually announced himself before he entered, simply knocking in the same pattern as he always did, the one that let Ruby knew was him. Despite her initial surprise, Ruby still smiled and reached for the doughnuts happily.

“How’s it going?” he asked, placing the bag on her desk and slung his tote bag of presents to the side of Ruby’s desk, where he would hopefully remember to pick them up when he left.

Ruby casually pulled a nearby magazine over whatever book she had been reading, before unfolding the paper sack to get at her treat. Clancy only noticed because he’d been interested in what exactly Ruby was learning about at the moment but looked away obediently when it became clear Ruby didn’t want him to see. Probably just the journal that the doctors wanted Ruby to fill in about her emotions and the patterning of her headaches.

“Nothing new. I’ve only just managed to get away with five minutes reading alone. TV’s not allowed, books aren’t allowed, I just have to sit and stare at the ceiling.” She groaned, and Clancy laughed.

Ruby tucked into her doughnut looking very pleased with herself, fishing out the second one for Clancy. This one was chocolate and obviously Blacker’s order, but Clancy had it anyway. He almost passed on Blacker’s regards but remembered at the last moment that he had been told to keep his mouth shut and was an awful spy

“Are you okay Ruby? You haven’t fallen over, have you?” Came Mrs Digby’s voice through the intercom system right on time and Clancy laughed as Ruby shooed him off to talk to her.

“All’s good Mrs Digby. She’s got her leg elevated and all lights are on dim.” He reported back to her, giving a thumbs up to Ruby, who was obviously not in bed with an elevated cast, but instead straining her eyes reading something about… codes.

Mrs Digby pressed the intercom button simply to “Hmph” and go quiet. Clancy hoped that meant he was believed.

Clancy finished his doughnut and stepped neatly away from Ruby as she tried to reach out to wipe her icing-sugar fingers on him.

“How did you get here?” Ruby asked, spinning lazily so she could watch him walk across the room to her massive bookshelves. He pulled her Oxford dictionary off the shelf and nearly dropped it on his foot by accident, taken by surprise at the heft of it.

“Hitch gave me a lift.” He told her, looking up just in time to watch her roll her eyes. He flipped through the dictionary to avoid rehashing the same argument they’d had several times in the past week about trusting Hitch.

Clancy knew full well that Ruby had nearly broken something new when Hitch came over to help her move from the dining room table to the sofa and Ruby had launched herself out of her chair to avoid him. Ruby had been nearly spitting mad in her room when Clancy came over that evening and Hitch had been silent in the kitchen, washing up plates and staring into space before retreating to his apartment without a word when Clancy came down for a few cold bottles of lemonade.

“Whatcha looking up?” Ruby changed the subject, obviously reading his mood like she normally did.

“Trying to find what something means. If you’re lucky I’ll read the dictionary to you later when Mrs Digby finds out you’ve been reading up here.”

Ruby barked a laugh, trying to reach her foot to scratch just under the cast. Clancy thought about helping for just a second when he saw her struggle and decided that scratching her foot was far out of his job description as best friend and loyal sidekick.

“It’s awful, I’m rereading the TV guide just to get some fun around here.”

Clancy snorted at that too, and finally found ‘ameliorate’. “To make something better that was bad or not good enough.” He read out to Ruby, just to keep her occupied.

“Ameliorate?” Ruby guessed, and Clancy groaned and pushed the dictionary back onto her shelves.

“That was a lucky guess, there’s no way anyone ever uses that word outside of boring scientific journals.”

“What scientific journals are you reading?” She asked with suspicious eyes. Clancy waved a hand at her, wedging the book between the fifth edition of some physics textbook and a thin paperback that was so cracked he couldn’t read the title.

There was a noise on the stairs and Clancy darted from the bookshelves to the desk, helping Ruby out of the chair and doing the worst three-legged race to the bed to drop Ruby in and then back to the desk chair himself to sit as coolly as possible.

There was a knock at the door as Clancy grabbed a discarded comic about a detective and a cat as if he were reading to Ruby.

“Come in.” Ruby called, her voice somewhat feebler than before. Hitch pushed the door open carefully but didn’t step inside. Ruby sighed and flung an arm across her eyes. Hitch’s expression didn’t change but Clancy was sure he had braced himself for that reaction when he knocked.

“Hi Clancy.” Hitch said pleasantly like they hadn’t seen each other ten minutes before. “Mrs Digby wants you both to know that lunch is in twenty minutes and that you better not be doing any strenuous activity.”

Clancy waved, shooting a glance over to Ruby who still wasn’t looking at Hitch. 

“Tell her I can come down and grab it if she buzzes the tannoy.” Clancy said after a stretch of silence. “No need for her to walk all the way up here.”

“Will do. Your next dose of painkillers is due in half an hour, I’ll remind Mrs Digby to pop them on the tray for when you finish lunch.”

Hitch grabbed the doorhandle to close it behind him and paused when he looked at Clancy one last time.

“How exactly are you reading a graphic novel to Ruby?” He asked and Clancy knew they’d been caught out. Frankly, they’d been caught out by the rush of movement just before Hitch had even knocked.

Now that Clancy thought about it, the stairs didn’t even make any noise, thanks Hitch’s DIY skills, he must’ve purposely stomped upstairs to warn them.

“I’m just, um. Describing the pictures.” Clancy lied poorly and Hitch smirked as he closed the door.

“So, this next panel is the cat again. He’s saying, ‘We should go and investigate the, dot dot dot.’.” Clancy narrated, aware of Hitch outside the door. “Close up of the cat. ‘Purr-normal cat-tivity.” He enunciated every pun clearly, trying to keep a straight face in case he started laughing hysterically.

Hitch’s footsteps faded away down the stairs and Ruby curled onto her side to laugh hard.

“’Detective Mittens and Claw-Enforcement’ was the only book up there?” She wheezed between laughs, obviously about to strain an injury. Clancy threw the comic down and laughed too.

“Why are you even reading this?” He asked

He scanned the desk but there wasn’t even any more books, save for the magazine hiding whatever Ruby was doing earlier. He purposely didn’t pick it up (see Ruby? He could be trusted) and instead reached for a small origami frog, similar to the ones they left in Amster Green. He waved it at Ruby, waiting permission to open it, even if it was coded for him anyway.

Ruby looked confused but shrugged at him to open it. He unfolded it easily, it was a simpler piece, and could hop across the tabletop like an actual frog, but Clancy was more interested in what it said inside.

There was a long stream of letters that didn’t make any sense and Clancy translated it as quickly as he could.

“Got a bad hunch. New art show on corner of East Arch. Looks like our friend is back.”

Clancy stared at it in concern for a moment and then quietly refolded it to place on the desk. He wasn’t quite sure what to say about all of that.

“Is that… Recent?” He asked, gesturing at it. Ruby had been trying to roll herself onto her side so she could sit up properly, like some kind of overbalanced beetle and she paused to look at it properly.

“I don’t think so?” She shrugged, and Clancy was suddenly unsure if she knew about the codes in the origami creatures they made. “Hitch said it was in my jacket pocket when they cut it off me at the hospital. Keep it, I can’t remember the key word. Or making it.”

Clancy pushed the frog into the pocket of his windbreaker but couldn’t ask her about their “friend” or what exactly the new art show was before Mrs Digby buzzed the tannoy system for Clancy to fetch the food.

Clancy stood and glanced at Ruby, trying desperately not to laugh at the state of her despite the sober mood the frog had put him in, until she threw a poorly aimed pillow at him.

“Fancy giving a poor injured kid a hand?” She snapped, and Clancy actually did chuckle as he went over before she fell off the bed completely.

“Did all that basketball training never give you any upper body strength?” He teased but was no help. He could run and swim well and that gave him a skinny frame and even less strength than Ruby.

He held out his hands towards her and groaned as he tried to lever her up.

“Lunch is ready. You two are sounding awful suspicious up there.” Mrs Digby called like they hadn’t heard the first buzz. Clancy was sure the vision of Mrs Digby’s patented disapproving face as she spoke flashed over Ruby’s eyes like it had for him. Both burst into laughter and then Clancy couldn’t even hold himself up, let alone Ruby.

“She can’t even see us; how does she do that?” Clancy whispered to Ruby, who had accepted her fate and was wriggling around to get comfortable on the bed.

“No clue. She’ll probably guess what’s been going on the second you step foot in the kitchen.” Clancy was aware she was probably right and grimaced as he scarpered downstairs before Mrs Digby came to investigate.

He promised Ruby to avenge her death if Hitch had replaced her painkillers with poison instead and joined her on the bed to munch through the sandwiches, crisps, and cookies. He gave her the run down on the ambassadorial plans for Nancy’s birthday (cream tea in a fancy manor house, followed by a visit to a new shopping mall that had opened just outside of downtown Twinford. Clancy was sure these were jobs his dad needed to tick off on his schedule of events but Nancy seemed happy enough.)

Ruby wisely kept the subject away from Hitch and somehow Clancy managed to keep his mouth closed about Spectrum, especially when Ruby got a headache just trying to remember the names of his sisters. Clancy got a headache thinking about it too, but that wasn’t the point.

It wasn’t too long after their Digby Clubs that Ruby fell asleep, and Clancy left the room quietly, clicking the lights off and pulling the door shut.

He dropped the tray of plates off with Mrs Digby who sighed wearily like it wasn’t her job and asked him if he enjoyed the food.

“Always do Mrs Digby!” He told her, hooking his bag over his shoulder. “Have you seen Hitch?”

Mrs Digby looked pleased but shrugged. “I think he went off to collect something for Sabina. You’re welcome to wait here for a ride.”

Clancy shook his head, heading for the door. A quick walk wouldn’t kill him. “It’s fine, just wanted to see if he was about for…” He really had to start think of convincing lies to cover himself. “A chat about that clarinet of his. My dad thinks I should start playing an instrument.”

Mrs Digby tutted. “A clarinet is no good, you want something like a trumpet for that house of yours.”

Clancy laughed and let himself out of the back door, waving at her. “The drums are my next option. Thanks for lunch!”

* * *

Clancy was at home by the time he realised that he had Ruby’s escape watch on him and could message Hitch to tell him about the note easily. But the note was just vague enough that Ruby could have been talking about nearly anything. There were no galleries or even public buildings down at East Arch street and it was too much of a walk to bother checking it out a week after Ruby had.

He let himself in the house through the back door, solely because he knew any one of his sisters would be waiting to ambush him. As it was, he only saw Amy who was in the living room watching the Saturday morning cartoons.

“Mum and Dad out?” he asked, and she turned her head, eyes locking on his bag in an instant.

“Yeah. Nancy is with them, Minny is out and everyone else in their rooms.” She told him, like the reliable informant she was, and he flashed her a grin.

“No telling about what I’ve got.” He reminded her but she was looking at the TV again and only mimed pulling a zip closed over her mouth.

Clancy turned and headed back to the stairs to stash everything under his bed before he got sucked into watching the cartoons with Amy.

It was only then that he allowed everything that had happened sink in. _He’d met LB_. And the rest of the cool Spectrum agents and they’d all seemed to like him well enough.

He made a gun out of his fingers and mimed pulling it at his reflection in the mirror like James Bond. Then he stopped that sharpish before Minny burst in to rightfully take the mick out of him for it.

He paused just before he jumped onto his bed as a thought occurred to him.

James Bond.

Maybe it was time for another movie marathon with Ruby.

* * *

Ruby kept notebook 624 sandwiched between her mattress and her floor when she left the room and held firmly behind a decoy copy of “Codes, Ciphers and Communication” when she read it. It had been three days since she’d found it and also since she’d seen Clancy. She’d woken up to a message on her answerphone: her telephone, a rhinestone-studded high-heeled shoe, flashing with the notification like a disco ball.

It was Clancy of course, telling her he couldn’t hold “the gang” back any longer and she had to meet them all at the Diner “as soon as humanly possible.” Ruby couldn’t help a smile at the stress in his tone. Day ten of her bed rest and she was to finally be allowed out.

She had plenty of time before the Diner and pulled the thin yellow book from its hiding place to leaf through it again.

A lot of the little notes were pointless, just notes on which neighbour slipped on ice when and one page simply held a list of names and descriptions of Mrs Beesman’s cats. But some gave a bit of a better insight on the man currently living with them.

“3rd September : Hitch made a dad joke today. Wasn’t even that funny.”

“19th September: Gave Hitch his birthday present. Found out his birthday is not in September. Informed I was off by a few months. Blacker does not know. Froghorn says he knows but will not divulge. Potato-head.”

“29th October: Hitch won’t admit that I did a very cool grind on the park railings at Central City. Gave me a lecture the whole way home about irresponsibility and concussions. Wouldn’t admit that falling off of the Eye Hospital was more dangerous. I pointed out Red was wearing my helmet and she needed it more than me. Hitch pointed out I could’ve waited my turn and if I couldn’t do a darkslide grind I was a poor excuse for an adrenaline junkie. Getting mixed messages. Think he means: don’t do tricks in front of him. His hair’s going grey already. (Note: convince Hitch to demonstrate a darkslide grind.)”

5th November: LB confirms Hitch can do a darkslide grind. (Note: convince LB to demonstrate a darkslide grind.”

Ruby opened her maths exercise book to the very last page and jotted down the names as they appeared. “Froghorn” “Blacker” and once “LB”. They were obviously code, but she couldn’t think of anyone in Twinford or beyond whose initials may have been LB. They weren’t anagrams nor did she know anyone with a particular affinity for frogs or the colour black.

Ruby had reached the end of what she could manage and got to her feet decisively. After hiding the notebook, she made her way to the door, determined to wreak havoc the best way she could.

Hitch, the butler, was in the kitchen when she came in. He looked faintly skittish, if a man who topped 6”4’ and was broader than two Ruby’s could be called skittish.

“When’s your birthday?” she asked, none too politely. Mrs Digby was clearly not in the walk-in pantry and her parents would not be in the kitchen at any time of day.

Hitch smiled, guarded. “Why do you need to know?” he replied, much politer than she had been.

Pulling a glass out of the cupboard, he set about making her a banana milk. She tried hard to keep the scowl on her face as he poured the syrup into the milk, seemingly randomly, but he somehow managed to eyeball the correct amount. He slid it in front of her at the counter like he was some fancy cocktail waitress and held a hand up as she opened her mouth.

He pulled a curly straw out of nowhere that Ruby could reasonably see (and she knew sleight-of-hand tricks, she had mastered most if not _all_ of them.)

Ruby grit her teeth. Hitch grinned like he had known exactly what she was going to say and really, he had, and popped it into the glass with a flourish.

“Thanks.” She managed and sat down, not finished with him just yet.

The man in question only picked up a wet plate from the sink and leant against the counter, expectantly awaiting her questions.

Ruby took a sip to steel herself and forced the corners of her mouth down when it was perfect.

“Is Hitch your first name?” She started out strong.

“No.”

“What is your first name?”

Hitch let out a tiny sigh. “Art.”

There was a second of a pause. “Art… Arthur? Arty? Artery? Artefact?” Ruby guessed, trying to painfully draw it out of him.

“Just Art.”

“Is Hitch your last name?”

“No.”

Ruby refrained against banging her head off of the table. She took another gulp of banana milk and briefly considered just throwing the whole glass at the man.

“What made you want to be a house manager?”

Hitch smiled demurely as he put a bowl away on a shelf. “I like the quiet life. Order, calm, peace, no chaos at all.”

Ruby’s hand tightened on her glass. Hitch with his nice clean pressed suit. Blink. Hitch with banana milk dripping down his shirt and the straw bouncing off his head. Blink. Hitch with a tiepin shaped like a tiny fly tucked into his neat Windsor-knot tie and colour-coordinating shirt. Blink. Hitch ducking the glass.

“Why are you so close to Clancy?”

Here Hitch looked a little concerned. “Clancy is around a lot. He stayed with you in the hospital as much as he physically could, he only left twice to shower and showed up an hour later on his bicycle. He stayed with you all night. I thought he was going to end up sick in the ward next to you. He was around a lot before your accident too.”

And that brought Ruby perfectly to her final point. “Who do you think did this to me?”

Hitch put his tea towel down carefully and came to sit at the stool opposite Ruby. She leaned back, but she knew that Hitch would not grab her or even touch her after the incident last week. Her body relaxes just an inch, like it feels safe or something, even as her head raged against the idea of trusting him. Her head has been wrong a lot, these days.

“When I woke up, you said you didn’t know why I was there. But it was just an accident so _why_ do you think it wasn’t?”

“I found you outside of Old Town Hall as I was driving home. You were on the pavement, propped against a lamppost with your leg broken and a nasty head wound. There was no one near you, and you weren’t conscious to tell me what happened. But with the state your leg was in, there was no way you could have gotten there alone, unless you dragged yourself.”

“I got you in the backseat and took you straight to the hospital. I had been told you were staying at Clancy’s and your parents thought you were at an acting class. Then you wake up with no memories.”

Hitch quirked one side of his mouth at her. “If you remember anything, let me know as soon as possible. If we can figure out who was with you, maybe we catch them.”

Ruby’s mind was reeling with the new information and there was faint thudding at the side of her head.

“Have I ever told you about New Age Witch Hunts?” She blurted and Hitch looked a little blindsided at the change of subject and grinned easily, leaning back in his chair.

“Once or twice or constantly, yeah. Got any new stories? It’s always either witch hunts or matriarchal societies with you.”

“They would be more effective.” Ruby muttered to cover her surprise. The yellow book had mentioned a similar conversation on matriarchy but the fact that Hitch had brought it up himself meant the content of the books were at least factually correct.

“I’m not arguing with you, we agreed at the time they would be more effective and peaceful.” He told her earnestly, like they were sharing a joke.

“So, interrogation over?” Hitch asked, taking her glass to deposit in the sink. Ruby crossed her arms and leant on them, watching the man carefully.

She wanted to ask about Blacker but doubted Hitch would know a codename for someone in her secret notebooks.

“For the moment.” She said warningly and Hitch set about washing up her glass.

After having a proper conversation with the guy, Ruby concluded that he was just some bozo who enjoyed everything being neat and tidy. Mrs Digby liked him, and she was a good judge of character. Not infallible but… trustworthy.

Ruby stood up, keeping her weight off of her foot. “Can I have a lift to the Diner?”

Hitch turned around with a smile, and something knocked against her temple, demanding attention.

“Of course, kid.” He had his tea towel slung across his shoulder like some domestic goddess and Ruby scowled, although it was more to do with the pressure in her temporal lobe than him individually. He didn’t need to know that though. 

“Just let me know when you’re ready.”


	4. meet me at blue diner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s with the fly anyway?” She asked, tapping a finger against the barrette she was wearing, oblivious to how Hitch might easily crash through the diner’s skylight with a gun.
> 
> Clancy paled a little at the thought of Hitch thinking Ruby was missing again, or worse, Ruby figuring out anything about the fly motif.
> 
> “No clue.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was actually going to have this up yesterday but I ended up going on a DISASTROUS zoom date which subsequently took up all of my evening and editing time.   
> I have a bunch of exams coming up in the next two weeks so I may start posting just a little quicker to get the story out of the way before then, so I'm not distracted by desperately wanting to write Ruby having banter instead of the socio-political discourse surrounding social constructionism of class hierarchies :// y'know how it is. 
> 
> Chapter title is from Mitski's "Old Friend" which as always, is a tune. Other songs involved in this chapter include Killer Queen and You're My Best Friend (which was released a few years sooner in the Cooler 70s RR is set in) and also David Bowie's "Starman" because I simply don't know any more popular American 70s songs?? Gimme TOTP anytime lmao. 
> 
> Next chapter will be Clancy Trying His Best and then it's simply all downhill after that!   
> Please leave a kudos and a comment if you enjoyed! I appreciate all of them so much!

Ruby hobbled down the porch stairs, leaning heavily on her crutches as she contorted herself to sit in the passenger seat, a pleased look never leaving her face.

Hitch gave her a look out of the corner of his eye and she only grinned back.

“What’ve you done?” he asked warily, and Ruby had to take a second to realise how well the stranger seemed to know her.

“Nothing yet.” She said cheerfully and finally revealed the cassette tape from where it’d been hidden in her sleeve. It was a short little mix tape, with the track-list written in Clancy’s magic space marker pen, and probably ripped on his cassette player too. Hitch caught sight of ‘Killer Queen’ on the plastic and closes his eyes in pain.

Hitch groaned as Ruby slotted it into the player but didn’t bother batting her hands away. “I can’t drive and listen to music at the same time. Especially with the music you listen to.” He complained, even as he reversed out of the driveway.

“You can’t complain, I’m injured.” She protested, crossing her arms as a statement.

“You never used to complain this much when you got hurt.” Hitch says, and Ruby wrinkles her nose and faces him directly. Hitch’s eyes widened slightly as he realised that he had said too much and watched the road, focusing remarkably well for a man listening to Queen. A muscle twitched in his jaw as she stared the side of his face down.

“I’ve never been injured this badly before.” She stated slowly, not completely sure of her own words.

“You’ve broken an arm.” Hitch reminded her, glancing sideways at her for her reaction. Ruby purposely didn’t blink. His mouth pulled down at the corner.

“How did I do that?” Ruby said carefully, and Hitch waved a hand in the air.

“Teenage hijinks I’m sure, I’m not one to get involved in your life. Now hush, I can’t hear the music.” He reached over to turn the music up and Ruby gave him a withering look, knowing full well he hated David Bowie.

They sat in silence as the cassette wound its way through Side A and both Ruby and Hitch breathed a sigh of relief when they finally pulled up outside the Double Doughnut Diner. Hitch immediately ejected the tape and tossed it in the glovebox. Ruby thought for a second that she caught sight of something metal and smooth lying in the shadows, but she didn’t get a chance to look before Hitch slammed it shut again.

“I’ll pick you up in an hour or two.” Hitch told her, holding onto her crutches as she hopped out of the car.

“Two.” Ruby hinted heavily, sticking her head back in the car to grab her crutches.

“Two.” Hitch confirmed.

“Three.” Ruby tried with a smile and Hitch rolled his eyes.

“Two and a half.” He allowed and passed the crutches as she stood up straight and shut the door.

Ruby waved at Hitch as he gave her a thumbs-up. He didn’t pull away from the kerb, despite other cars swerving around him, until she rolled her eyes and turned towards the Diner, stomping the best she could with the big stupid cast.

“Rubes!” Was the first thing she heard before the doorbell even jingled and she couldn’t help but grin at the sight of her friends sprawled over the red vinyl booths of the diner. She bypassed the counter completely, eyes focused on the untouched doughnut in front of Clancy and remembered why she was such good friends with him.

Red slid off the bench to bounce over to Ruby and hug her, herding her towards her unoccupied seat. The rest of them were still calling greetings and good-natured taunts of “What took you so long? Did you walk here?” from Del. The whole diner was staring at them, but Marla very kindly pretended she couldn’t hear them, or the other customers’ complaints.

Del and Elliot both reached to ruffle her hair up, Del from across the table and Elliot from the booth behind her. They never fit on one table, especially not when Ruby’s leg was bound in plaster. She batted them both away, trying to stop her laughter before Elliot took it too far and made her hair an irrecoverable mess. Mouse slung an arm around her neck in greeting and then they were all talking at once about her leg and what school was like and how the basketball team was absolutely _hopeless_ without her.

Clancy just grinned at her across the table, not even trying to be heard over the din of the others. They finally wound down, Del taking deep breaths and retying her ponytail to soothe herself. She was dressed in her basketball shirt, the one with “LASCO” across the back like anyone could forget her. Ruby had been walloped in the head and could still remember Del Lasco. She looked like she was planning on heading straight to the courts after the diner, judging by her matching orange shorts and trainers. It was really far too cold for the outfit, but Del would always claim that she ‘worked hard’ for the sight of her legs in those shorts and Ruby wasn’t one to argue.

Red’s skateboard was leaning up against the table, and she had her legs drawn up to her chest, her chin tucked on her knee as she watched Elliot put Clancy into a headlock in retaliation for an argument Ruby had completely missed. Clancy was laughing though, and Red was smiling at the whole scene. Mouse was trying to convince Ruby to come play ping-pong like Ruby could stand up any longer than ten minutes at a time.

The noise of all five of them was nearly overwhelming but she hadn’t seen them for nearly two weeks, and they were so achingly familiar she couldn’t bring herself to step away for a breather.

The group only quietened down properly when Marla came over to the table, carrying a tray with a single milkshake on it. She placed it in front of Ruby with a wink.

“We’ve lost a lot of revenue without you. Drink up, you need your calcium.” She told Ruby who grinned, pulling the milkshake closer to her and sipping through the straw. It was banana flavoured but made up of powder. Marla didn’t buy the expensive syrup from Europe like the Redfort’s did, but she tried. Clancy leaned forward to snatch the glace cherry off the tip of the whipped cream and Ruby grinned at the familiarity.

“I appreciate it Marla, thanks a lot.” She told her, and Marla rolled her eyes.

“Now, if you guys don’t keep it down, I’ll chuck the lot of you out, broken leg or no.”

Del pulled a face as she walked away. “We weren’t being that loud.” She said seriously, setting Elliot off in cackles.

“You wouldn’t stop bouncing that ball around before Marla took it off you.” He pointed out. Del looked very displeased by this reminder and eyed the basketball sat in pride of place on the back counter.

“Before we get kicked out, I was told to bring this for a reason?” Clancy defused the situation like he always did, pulling his space marker pen from his sleeve for no immediately apparent reason.

Ruby only realised what was happening when Del grabbed the pen from his hand and turned on her.

“Wait guys!” She yelped, holding Del off with spread hands. “Remember I have to wear this around for another five weeks!”

Elliot’s mouth dropped open in offence. “We weren’t going to write anything rude!”

Mouse shrugged. “I was probably going to write something rude.”

Clancy barked a laugh at her casual tone, and Red doubled up with laughter.

“And probably blame it on Elliot too.” Elliot looked uncharacteristically unfunny about the whole thing but even Del started to laugh at the thought of Mouse writing something that probably wouldn’t have even been explicit to be immortalised on Ruby’s cast. 

“Mouse has lost pen privileges; I can’t trust her.” Ruby declared and Red booed, half on top of the table to reach Mouse, squishing her cheeks together affectionately. 

“How can you not trust this face Rubes?” She asked in the most dramatic tones possible. Mouse tried her best to smile winningly. 

Ruby caved immediately and manoeuvred her leg around the best she could, propping it up on a nearby stool so the others could converge on it like vultures. 

Del drew a basketball on her inner ankle and scrawled her name like an autograph across the top of her foot.

“No repeats of ‘Wake Up and Smell the Banana Milk Redfort’ please!” Clancy called out and Del huffed before passing the pen off to Red. The pressure got to be too much for her and she immediately misspelt her name and had to have Mouse fashion it into a kind of flower shape to cover it up. Elliot and Clancy had a brief argument about who got the prime spot of Ruby’s shin but Elliot eventually gave in and had to settle for the calf area.

Clancy shouldered Elliot aside, not unkindly, and squinted at the leg like he was trying to decide the best place for his artwork.

“My eyes are up here, bozo.” Ruby drawled, scooping whipped cream out of the bottom of the glass with her straw, and occasionally her tongue. Clancy affectionately told her to shut up, and finally began his sketch of a fly just to the side of her calf, half hidden by Elliot’s message about getting well enough to kick butt and a small cat. Ruby observed from her seat above him and nodded when it was done.

“What’s with the fly anyway?” She asked, tapping a finger against the barrette she was wearing, oblivious to how Hitch might easily crash through the diner’s skylight with a gun. Clancy paled a little at the thought of Hitch thinking Ruby was missing again, or worse, Ruby figuring out anything about the fly motif.

“No clue.” Del grunted, trying her best against Red and Elliot in an arm wrestle. By trying her best, Ruby meant in terms of making them think they had a chance at winning. Del’s biceps could make a better man jealous, but Red and Elliott were sore losers and liable to pouting about the loss.

The others chipped in with shrugs, Clancy conspicuously last and an over-pronounced “I have _no_ idea.”

Ruby fixed him with a suspicious look, but Clancy just looked away and cleared this throat. “Hey Eli, didn’t you want one last drawing?”

Elliott immediately lost interest in the arm wrestle, withdrawing his hand without thinking. Del crushed Red’s hand against the table due to the sudden loss of resistance. Red yelped with pain and collapsed face-first on the table, trying to work feeling back into her bruised hand.

Elliott barely looked back as he reached for the pen eagerly.

“No genitalia.” Ruby demanded, covering her leg with as much of her arm as she could. “Nothing that my parents could see and then break my other leg for.”

Elliott huffed and pushed her arms away. “Who do you think I am, a hooligan?” He quickly reached out to bat at Clancy’s side. “You’re not allowed to answer that.”

Clancy looked suitably put out and Ruby slid a five dollar note across the table at him to perk him up. “Could you order me pancakes? And grab yourself a milkshake, on me.”

Clancy beamed at her and bounced off to do so before Mouse stopped and gave him a handful of change.

“Could I have some French toast too? Please?” Clancy rolled his eyes but there was no one at the table who believed that he would deny her. He headed to the counter with their separate handfuls of money, shaking his head slightly.

Del leaned over the table, eyes fixed onto Clancy’s retreating back instead of Ruby. “Boy, was he cut up about you being in hospital.” She told her seriously.

Ruby bit her lip. This wasn’t new information; Clancy had been in the hospital room with her next of kin for the whole time. Even Hitch said he couldn’t get him to leave for more than an hour or two. But the thought of Clancy anxiously watching over her made something twist in her chest.

“I did have a major head injury.” Ruby pointed out, feeling a need to defend Clancy. Everyone knew the kid was worried about most things, especially if the thing started with ‘R’ and ended in ‘uby’.

Del shrugged as she sat back, obviously assuming Clancy was out of earshot.

“I didn’t remember him at all when he came into the room.” Ruby added and Elliot zoned back into the conversation, slipping into the freed seat across from Ruby. “Hit him with the ol’ ‘Who the hell are you’.”

Elliot winced. “That’s why he was so upset. He let us all know you were having some memory issues but wouldn’t answer any questions. Said something about patient confidentiality and hung up on me.”

Ruby laughed at that, able to imagine Clancy doing that with very little difficulty. The slightly less funny thing was how Clancy really was upset about the incident.

She glanced up at the front of the diner, at Clancy leaning against the counter, probably apologising to Marla for the lot of them. When he saw her looking, he gave a grin and a thumbs-up.

She smiled back. She still had to talk to him about what Hitch had said, and maybe ask what Hitch had been like before the accident, and a hundred of other things that weren’t making sense in what was left of her memory but for the moment she sent him finger-guns across the crowded diner.

He laughed enough that he missed Marla putting his milkshake down in front of him with an eye roll.

“Hitch said he was at the hospital the whole time I was asleep.” Ruby told the table, none of whom reacted with any kind of surprise.

“Yeah, he didn’t come into school at all. Mouse grabbed his homework and stuff for him, but we barely even heard from him. He came home once and rang around to update us but that was it.” Elliot filled her in, fidgeting with his own milkshake.

“We went to your house, but your parents said you were still in hospital. Then the hospital said none of us could visit you because you were…” Del gnawed on her lip for a moment, clearly trying to think of a word that wouldn’t hurt. “Unstable.”

Ruby still winced and wondered what the words that Del was avoiding were, for ‘unstable’ to be the best out of the lot.

“I got all your flowers and chocolate.” She said, seeing the guilty looks on every face around the table.

“And I’m fine now, so there’s no need to feel bad.” She added, as none of them really looked happier.

Red glanced at Del before opening her mouth. “What happened exactly? Even Clancy had no idea. I mean I get clumsy,” she gestured down at herself, her hands roughed up from a bad skate fall and definitely a scraped knee or two. “But you’ve broken a leg, you’ve broken an arm, you got burnt that one time and then you were right in the middle of all that stuff on the Eye Hospital. What keeps happening to you?”

“It’s just weird.” Mouse pointed out, obviously trying to calm the conversation down. She didn’t quite have the same knack as Clancy.

“I can’t remember what happened either.” Ruby said, trying to sound as casual as possible. It bothered her that she didn’t know anything about her own life. “I probably just fell off my bike and hit my head. I don’t even remember whatever happened at Eye Hospital.”

The four kids around the table looked shocked enough by that confession that Ruby had a blissful moment of peace until Clancy came back with her plate of pancakes and Mouse’s French toast.

He’d remembered their topping orders perfectly and she grinned at him, spinning her plate around so her strawberries were closer to him. He reached over to pick one off and tipped his milkshake glass at her in a toast.

“I told you that you owed me a milkshake.” Ruby was actually fairly sure that he had not told her that but wasn’t exactly going to withdraw it now.

“So, what _do_ you remember?” Red asked, like the secret conversation they’d been having hadn’t been secret. Ruby cut a glance at Clancy who winced as he sipped from his milkshake.

“I really only remember bits and pieces from the whole past year. I guess I remember the important things. Like how I met you guys and Halloween and stuff like that.”

There was no pattern in what she remembered and what she didn’t. She had spent hours in her room, hoping to finally pick apart why she couldn’t remember what happened during the summer of 1973. Or the fall. Or over the Christmas.

“Do you remember me?” Elliott asked, folding himself over the back of the bench seat to slide into Ruby’s field of vision. Surprised, she pushed him away with a hand on his forehead.

“I remember all of you, bozo, or I wouldn’t be here, would I?” She told him impatiently and he wrinkled his nose.

“What’s my favourite colour?”

She glanced at his jacket.

“Red.”

Elliot shrugged. “Clean bill of health from me.”

“At least you don’t need to worry about falling behind in school.” Del pointed out before Ruby could argue with Elliot. Ruby would’ve laughed if Del wasn’t trying so hard to be kind. As it was, Ruby managed to smile at her.

“Can’t help with any homework though guys. I’ve been banned from any kind of reading or watching television.”

Red blew a raspberry from her perch on the second booth bench alongside Elliot. Her chin was resting on Mouse’s head as the other girl tried very hard to eat her French Toast.

“I guess I can’t ask you what you think about Despo’s latest girlfriend, y’know Stacey, being killed in front of him, huh?”

Clancy booed suddenly and loudly. He snatched up a strawberry from Ruby’s plate and aimed it at Red, who immediately ducked behind Mouse.

The strawberry sailed across the whole booth and onto the table next to a couple on a date. Clancy went pale and slid down in his chair.

“Sorry.” He muttered. “It’s just, I haven’t been watching it either. I really liked Stacey. I thought things were looking up for Despo.”

“I don’t remember a Stacey.” Ruby piped up, and Clancy shuffled his way into sitting upright again.

“She was fairly recent. We’ve missed about three episodes. She only showed up at the end of episode…” He counted on his fingers.

“Eight.” Red said helpfully. “She was the barmaid in the place he went to, to get information about who killed his partner, Jack. Episode eleven came out this week.”

Ruby wasn’t really listening now though. Her pancakes had suddenly gone very thick in her mouth as she realised that Clancy had purposely avoided watching Crazy Cops, and any spoilers, just so they could continue their weekly routine of watching them together when she finally recovered.

“Quick death for Crazy Cops.” She added instead, but her voice was quieter than before.

“Thanks for all that Red.” Clancy told her, and she had the decency to look upset.

“I haven’t been able to discuss it with anyone! I didn’t mean to give away the fact she was killed in the back alley by—” Mouse reached up with her last crust and stuffed it in Red’s mouth.

It was probably a good thing too, because Marla had giving them dirty looks from the front counter since the arm-wrestling incident. When Clancy had booed, she graduated to making a cutting motion with her hand over her throat in the universal ‘Shut up or I’ll kill you’ signal whenever Clancy snuck a peek at her.

Clancy buried his face in his hands and tried to think of a neutral topic.

“Red, how’s the skateboarding going?” He said finally, just to stop Red and Mouse’s bickering.

Red immediately grinned, swallowing the last mouthful of Mouse’s French toast. “Great!” she declared even though her hands were scraped up enough to need plasters over the heels.

Ruby appreciated the change of topic and caught Clancy’s eye to mouth a quick “Thanks” while the others weren’t paying attention. He gave her his trademark lop-sided grin and focused in on Red.

She relaxed back in her seat to let Red talk her ear off about how she was going to use the next five weeks of Ruby’s recovery time to beat her at a long list of skateboard tricks Ruby could only barely picture.

As Red spoke, Mouse continued doodling on Ruby’s foot, occasionally handing the pen off to Elliot. A small ghost, a tortoise and a cassette tape sprung up in the spaces between names until there was no space that Mouse could feasibly reach, and the cast appeared more silver than red.

As Ruby ran her finger through the last traces of golden syrup left on her plate, all thoughts of the yellow books, Clancy’s fly, the origami frog that had sat unreadable on her desk for a week and Hitch’s weirdness finally left her mind.

She was with her friends and she had missed them. Even if their questions caused even more headaches.

The semi-peace they had cultivated was finally broken by Red springing up in her seat to show off her prowess at the “flamingo”. Ruby realised that maybe she had appeared a bit too enthusiastic in Red’s skateboarding in her relief for a new conversation topic. She kind of really did want to see Red do it though, just not when the board was going to go flying into some poor Twinford folk’s cup of tea.

“Rubes! Is that Hitch’s car?” Clancy exclaimed finally, while Red talked Mouse into letting her try just _one_ flip. Ruby craned her neck from her seat and sure enough there was a silver car waiting outside the glass windows of the diner.

Ruby checked her wrist for the time, wondering if it really had been two and a half hours like Hitch had promised, but she didn’t even wear a watch. Nevertheless, the diner clock declared that it was in fact, _three_ hours after Hitch had dropped her off. Ruby wasn’t sure if this was Hitch being friendly, or just bad at his job as chauffeur.

Finally, the group of friends left the diner. Marla looked more than pleased to see the back of them, although she levelled a finger at Ruby who was tottering along on her crutches.

“Next time it’ll be business as usual.” She said warningly. “One yell and you’re all out on your ear.”

Del reached over the countertop to snatch her confiscated basketball.

“One day I’ll ban you.” Marla warned her but was already walking off with a pot of coffee for another patron and didn’t see Del roll her eyes.

Their goodbyes were just as rowdy as their time in the diner had been and Ruby had been pulled into three different hugs and one group hug before everyone went their separate ways.

Del and Mouse peeled off towards the basketball courts. Red was supposed to be waiting for her mum to show at some point and Elliot ambled off with her to a nearby park bench.

Clancy walked Ruby to the car like the gentleman he was. “I know you’ve been banned from reading like it's the 1950s.” He said earnestly, just before she reached the door. “But are you free on Friday for a movie or two? Whoops sorry, _for me to read to you_?”

He pitched his voice just a little louder for the last few words so Hitch could hear as Ruby opened the door. Clancy winked at Ruby like he’d gotten away with it.

“Of course, I am. Be sure to bring your ‘Complete Works of Shakespeare’ to the door with you. Mrs Digby hates Shakespeare, she won’t even check on us.”

Clancy grinned and passed through her crutches so she could stand them in the footwell.

“I’ll see you Friday then.” He called and shut the door with a little more force than necessary.

Ruby smiled and turned her head to Hitch who didn’t look impressed.

“I hope that little plan doesn’t involve you watching television.” He warned and she rolled her eyes.

“Thought you weren’t one to get involved in my life.” She snipped and Hitch laughed, turning the ignition key, and smoothly starting off down the street.

“Yet I’m somehow always involved.” Hitch shot her a grin like they were sharing some kind of secret or joke between them.

“Don’t let Mrs Digby catch you though, Shakespeare or not.”


	5. we keep it secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mafia films, really?” He pressed Ruby, who had actually never, to her knowledge, watched ‘The Godfather’. She had second-hand knowledge from Elliot who had desperately wanted to join the mafia after he watched the film, despite the painful fact that Twinford wasn’t exactly New York City, 1945 and didn’t have its own mafia. And Ruby was pretty sure everyone in the film had died too.
> 
> “There’s nothing wrong with being in the mafia.” Ruby argued, dedicated to the lie now, before she narrowed her eyes. “Hey, you know who acts like he’s in the mafia?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hnnnn this didn't come out quite as I wanted it to, but at Clancy and Ruby bonding was most important to me lmao, and I've gone so long without an update I might as well post it.   
> This was the last funny chapter for this story really, and the plot really picks up in the next few chapters. I have nearly 15k written up of the rest of the story but I imagine it'll probably be 20k by the time I'm done typing up loose ends.   
> I may start posting biweekly because I'm thriving off RR hyperfixation right now (writing 10k of a new RR fanfiction?? While this one is unfinished? It's more likely than you think). However, I was not thriving at all last week due to my final assessments in uni (hence the skipped chapter), and I still have two assessments to go THIS week, so you simply may not get the chapter next week. I'm sorry and I cannot organise myself to save my life. 
> 
> Chapter title this week is from "Once More To See You" by Mitski. Have been on a major Mitski kick lately because WLW so have "I Will" by Mitski as a platonic Clancy&Ruby trying to survive Spectrum together. 
> 
> As always thank you for reading! Any comments/kudos/bookmarks are appreciated! Stay safe everyone!

Clancy kicked his way into Ruby’s room with a duffelbag held tightly in his arms. Ruby jumped in her chair where she was sat at her desk, reading a well-worn code book. She had exhausted the contents of Book 624 and her quick flick through the other books didn’t seem to have any further answers.

So, codes. It was nice to have something she could recognise and understand.

She twisted her head around and smiled at him. She hadn’t known he was coming over, but his sister’s birthday had made everything in the Crew household very complicated. Clancy had always enjoyed the peace of the Redforts' and who was Ruby to deny him. 

Clancy headed for her bed and tipped the bag upside down. A collection of VCR tapes clattered out on top of her duvet. 

“What are those?” she asked and immediately regretted it as Clancy’s mouth dropped. “VCR tapes I know, I know. I meant what movies?” she amended quickly before Clancy told her the entire history of the VCR tape.

Clancy recovered his grin and dropped the duffel bag to one side. She pushed off from her desk lazily to squint at the titles.

“Spy films!” He announced, as enthusiastic as ever and then looked guiltily at the door, darting over to shut it. It was going to be a long night if Clancy was already paranoid about people listening into their conversations.

“James Bond: Goldfinger. James Bond: Live and Let Die. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. The Thousand Eyes of Doctor Mabuse.” She read off from Clancy’s scribbly handwriting. There was definitely a theme here.

“Classics!” Clancy announced. Ruby wasn’t allowed on the roof for a number of reasons varying from her broken leg and her ‘inability to stay safe’ so a corner of her bedroom would have to be an adequate cinema for the time being. Clancy dragged Ruby’s tiny TV in front of her beanbags, not even blinking as he kicked a small pile of dirty t-shirts towards the laundry chute. If she didn’t stop him, Ruby was sure he’d tidy her room for her.

Ruby accepted Clancy’s hand in lowering her into one of the beanbags, even though it looked like he was going to fall on top of her for a minute, before rather gracelessly dropping her.

Ruby’s fingers tapped against the signatures on her cast as Clancy bustled around with all the films (Ruby had counted six not including any from her own movie collection, but she had a feeling that they’d had much more intense binging sessions than just six poorly written British films.) Clancy slotted a tape in before Ruby could see the label and piled the rest on top of the monitor.

“We saw one of the Bond films at the movie theatre, right?” Ruby’s eyes flowed Clancy around as he pulled drawers open in her desk and pulled out chocolate bars she didn’t even know she had.

“Sure did!” Clancy confirmed, still as frenetic as he had been when he came in. “Last summer. You hid some of Mrs Digby’s sandwiches under your jacket. The clerk definitely knew something was up, but you just kept shivering until he gave us the ticket stubs.”

Ruby was able to imagine the scene and gave a smirk. It didn’t quite feel like real life, more like Clancy was describing the plot of another book he’d swiped from his mother’s bedside table. Clancy finally dropped into the beanbag he always sat in when he came over and tossed her a Hershey’s bar without hesitation.

“You know, you’re _lucky_.” Clancy announced, ripping into a KitKat and scrunching the foil into a tight ball. Ruby waited, interested in what exactly Clancy thought was a blessing. “I wish I could rewatch the Bond movies again for the first time! You can watch all the red herrings and twists and not know what’s going to happen!”

“I’m pretty sure I can guess a good half of the twists.” Ruby countered. Clancy didn’t seem too put out by that.

“You did the first time around, so I’m sure you’ll do it now.” He said, good naturedly. “I’m not giving you any hints though.”

Ruby wrinkled her nose up and threw a wrapper at him. It fluttered uselessly to the floor before it ever reached Clancy, who watched it with some amusement. “It’s not my fault that the films are so predictable. When you’ve seen one spy film, you’ve kind of seen them all. Something bad happens to the spy, the spy figures out something, with the help of some kind of glamourous assistant at least in the Bond films, the spy takes down the bad guy. That covers all six of your films.”

Clancy stuck his tongue out at her. “But there are _nuances_ , the situation is different every time and you don’t _know_ if the spy will actually get out alive and safe!”

“Of course, the spy will get out alive and safe. It’s a movie Clance, the actor doesn’t actually get… whatever you think is going to happen to him.” Ruby shot him a Patented Digby Look that conveyed "Are you serious right now child?" without words perfectly and reached over for the remote by Clancy’s arm, nearly toppling out of her beanbag but managed to right herself with her prize in hand.

The opening sequence to “Live and Let Die” very nearly drowned out Clancy’s dull, “It’s a movie, of course.”

But not quite.

* * *

Clancy sat with his arms crossed and a pout on his face when the credits for the movie began scrolling. Ruby sat in a similar haughty silence before finally giving in to Clancy’s scowl.

“Look, I’m sorry I guessed who Mr Big was when he first came on screen.” She told him. Clancy huffed, and refused to look at her.

“You said you didn’t remember the film at all.” He argued and Ruby couldn’t help laughing at his annoyance.

“I don’t, I promise you I don’t. It’s not my fault that it’s so predictable. Let me guess, you didn’t realise it at all until he said, ‘Bond, it is me. I’m the bad guy’?” 

“That’s not the point.” Clancy continued but he was laughing now. Ruby shuffled herself out of her beanbag to slide in the next questionable film.

“It was an okay film though. Bit risqué.” Clancy snorted loudly at that, aiming a half-hearted kick at her.

“The last scene was good! Hey Ruby, you could dangle me over a pit of wolves…” He trailed off waiting for her to finish the sentence like they had a hundred times before.

Ruby pushed the next tape into the player and gave him a quizzical look as she plumped her beanbag up for another hour of movie bingeing.

“Okay?” She said with some confusion, fidgeting with the remote as she waited for Clancy to get this mood over with.

The grin dropped off Clancy’s face so quickly Ruby immediately knew she’d said the wrong thing.

“It’s a, it’s a thing we do.” Clancy explained but he looked embarrassed and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I say something like ‘You can hold me out of a top floor window’ and then you say something like ‘Or feed your toes to crocodiles’ because I never blab about anything. It’s dumb, don’t worry—”

He lunged for the remote to change the subject, but Ruby held it out of his reach, pushing him back with a hand on his forehead. “I’ll remember next time.” She promised, seriously and Clancy _knew_ that she would, but it didn’t have the same feeling to it: her trust and certainty in him and his loyalty to her. He nodded reluctantly, before he spotted something behind Ruby and leaned for it quickly to change the subject.

“What did it do to you?” He held up one of Mrs Digby’s magazines that was mostly torn apart, with neat-cut holes in the few remaining pages. TV guides didn’t even have coupons to cut out and cash in. Ruby screwed her face up in concentration but shrugged.

“I didn’t know you liked scrapbooking.” He said idly, flicking through what was left of it. It was creased from being shoved under Ruby’s beanbag, and there was no way of telling what exactly had been cut out. The only thing Clancy could really identify was the headings and times for a long column of tv showings from nearly three weeks ago. Which exact movies that had been shown had been carefully removed and presumably stuck somewhere.

“Neither did I.” Ruby pointed out, wrinkling her nose as she looked at the guide. “It’s probably nothing important, just bin it.”

Clancy shrugged and threw it in the direction of the bin, but it fell short by quite a bit. He made a vague promise to himself that he would pick it up to put it in the trash later and forgot about it as soon as the next movie began playing.

It was sometime later before they spoke properly again, with Clancy holding the few remaining tapes up for Ruby to point at the next one to be played. They had been poking fun at nearly every scene, quietening for dialogue, and then averting their eyes for a particularly raunchy scene.

Clancy grabbed the remote to fast forward through one of those scenes because it made him queasy. He glanced at Ruby who was staring off at her bookshelves, but he doubted she was looking for her next read.

Somehow, in the dim of the closed blinds and the soundtrack of the film, Clancy managed to take a breath and say what had been bugging him for weeks.

“If you had told me you were going off to explore something, I would’ve covered for you. I’ve done it before.” Clancy spoke into the room as a whole so he didn’t see Ruby’s reaction.

He knew she would barely remember the times he had covered and lied for her and it was too late to save Ruby’s traumatic brain injury anyway, but he was still smarting that Ruby had run off, giving three different excuses to whoever she’d come into contact with and then gotten into the worst accident of her life. She obviously hadn’t wanted Clancy to come with her, and the scrappy note she had left had never reached him. It didn’t even have enough information for Clancy not to be laughed out of Spectrum.

“I told you, I won’t blab, never.”

He finally looks over at her, head resting on the beanbag, to look at Ruby. Her eyebrows were scrunched up, a now-familiar expression for when she was trying to remember.

“I told you all my secrets?” Ruby asked, trying to slot new pieces of knowledge away in a brain that was unwilling to cooperate. She knew the truth in what she was saying like she knew she could ride a bike, instinctive. She knew Clancy was there for her and she could lean on him if she could just opened up more.

“Of course, Rube. I haven’t lied to you once, before or after.”

Ruby couldn’t quite look at Clancy when she asked her next question, looking more at his windbreaker thrown over the back of her desk chair. “Do you tell me all of your secrets?”

Clancy hesitated for just a second. Ruby noted it and tucked it away, a tiny tally mark set against her trust in him. “I’ve never lied to you. And if you ask, I’ll tell you everything.”

Ruby recognised that for the code it was, and her shoulders relaxed. She didn’t have all the pieces, but she knew that when her mind started working again, Clancy would be there like he had been so far, with all the final answers.

She pressed play on another spy movie that maybe wasn’t as bad as she thought it might’ve been.

Clancy relaxes too.

* * *

When the final movie finished playing, it was late enough that Clancy had to leave. He grabbed his windbreaker and waved at Ruby, who was using the bookshelves to haul herself upright. She didn’t have the abs to stand up from the beanbag, and Clancy had kind of assumed she would simply shuffle to her bed as he left. 

He quickly grabbed her crutches and held them out, so she didn’t topple over onto him.

“I’ll walk you out, no worries.” She said like it wasn’t a struggle for her to walk from the top to the bottom of the house for no reason.

Clancy knew he couldn’t argue with her and walked in front of her down the stairs so that if she did fall, he would at least cushion the impact.

Hitch was in the kitchen as they walked past, and Clancy waved.

“Heading off already?” Hitch asked politely, like Clancy hadn’t been hanging around for the better part of the day.

“Sure am. You can hang onto the tapes, I’ll come over another time finish watching them.” Clancy directed this at Ruby, who was trying to get onto the bar stool.

“What tapes were you watching?” Hitch said innocently enough, and Ruby watched as Clancy’s shoulders clamped around his ears.

“Action movies.” Clancy answered rather weakly. Ruby did not envy the look Hitch gave Clancy.

“What kind?”

“The Godfather.” Ruby volunteered as helpfully as she could.

Hitch looked surprised for the first time. “The _mafia_?” He asked, but it was directed mostly towards Clancy in some disappointment.

Clancy was edging towards the door now Hitch’s attention had been diverted, and Ruby watched him go with some amusement.

“Mafia films, really?” He pressed Ruby, who had actually never, to her knowledge, watched ‘The Godfather’. She had second-hand knowledge from Elliot who had desperately wanted to join the mafia after he watched the film, despite the painful fact that Twinford wasn’t exactly New York City, 1945 and didn’t have its own mafia. And Ruby was pretty sure everyone in the film had died too.

“There’s nothing wrong with being in the mafia.” Ruby argued, dedicated to the lie now, before she narrowed her eyes. “ _Hey,_ you know who acts like he’s in the mafia?”

Clancy lunged for the back door and all but threw himself out. “I’ll catch you tomorrow, Rubes!” He called in a facsimile of casualness. The door slammed behind him. Clancy took a deep breath as he headed to where he’d stashed his bike.

He knew _exactly_ who acted like he was in the mafia, and frankly that conversation was up to Hitch now.

Ruby waved, nonplussed by the weird behaviour. Hitch had turned his head to watch Clancy go, with raised eyebrows.

“It was you.” Ruby offered, leaning over the kitchen counter to grab at the edge of the fruit bowl and tug it closer.

“What was me?” Hitch slid the bowl towards her before she could tip all the fruit out of the bowl. He rolled his eyes at her childishness and pretended he hadn’t when Ruby actually looked at him. He didn’t need to give her any more reasons to hate him.

“You act like you’re in the mafia. It’s the constant suit. And the car.” Ruby gestured at Hitch with the apple she was holding.

“Don’t you have a bedtime?” Hitch groaned, and Ruby slid out of her seat.

“I’m onto you.” She told Hitch, in a very serious voice. Hitch was looking incredibly unimpressed, and not at all intimated.

“You’re… Really not.” Hitch said, but Ruby was already heading up the stairs and chose to ignore him. At least she had taken the attention away from Clancy and his action movies. Hitch did seem the kind of person to laugh at James Bond, and Clancy hadn’t looked happy at all during the conversation. Score one for Ruby being a good friend.

Ruby managed to climb to her room finally and threw herself into bed. The tapes were still stacked up around the TV in the corner and it crackled softly with static. She closed her eyes against the comforting white noise.

Her dreams were full of sharks and James Bond’s gadgets and, bracketed by nonsense revolving around the Double Doughnut Diner shutting down and Clancy moving cities, the fear of being chased down the streets of Twinford, trying to outrun some horror just behind her.

She forgot them all as soon as she woke again. But that was nothing new.


	6. i'll lose my mind at least another thousand times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is that a fly? What a peculiar choice.”   
> As she watched him, cataloguing every feature she could possibly tell from the dim light, a smile grew across his face, his eyes unerringly finding hers despite the way she shrank back in the shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early update so I stop focusing on this instead of my assignments! Can't write a new chapter for Tuesday if I'm technically ahead of posting! 
> 
> The title of this chapter is from "Devil Town" by Cavetown. V2 is my favourite version, closely followed by Devinyl Splits, but the plain album version works just as well.

Ruby was out for blood.

Out for blood and answers.

She’d been walking back from Back-Spin, after a couple of hours watching Mouse and Del play. It had been a fun evening; the café was slightly more low-key than the Diner had been and Ruby was blissfully headache-free. She had played a couple of games against them both but standing on her cast was difficult after about ten minutes, and her hand-eye coordination hadn’t exactly been improved by cracking her head open.

(Plus, Del wasn’t great at waiting her turn to play.)

Ruby wedged her and her cast—now her leg was halfway healed she was able to walk without crutches if she was careful—into the payphone cubicle, planning on collect-calling Hitch for a lift, when she caught sight of Hitch’s car pulling up into the abandoned on-street parking of Main Street and step out with a briefcase.

Ruby opened the payphone door open to call out to him, but Hitch had already raised his hand to knock on a door wedged between a barbershop and a bakery. It was one that Ruby had seen hundreds of times before, one that probably led into the flats above the shops, but she had no idea who lived there. The door swung open, and light spilled across Hitch’s face.

“My apologies for being late.” He said and the road was dead quiet, enough so Ruby could hear him near perfectly. “Is everyone else here?”

Hitch stepped inside without even glancing in her direction. 

Ruby felt betrayed. She had kind of, sorta tried to trust Hitch. And now he was skulking around Twinford, with a briefcase for the office job he didn’t even have!

Ruby left the payphone and hurried up the road as quickly as she could. There was an alleyway around the back of the buildings and hopefully a fire escape that could give her a view into one of the flats. It would be extraordinarily lucky if she did find the right window, but she was feeling hopeful.

The window didn’t line up with the fire escape but was a foot or two to the right. Ruby climbed the stairs anyway and leaned over the railing to get a glimpse of what must be someone’s living room. They had some tasteful art on the wall, but that was all Ruby could see, apart from the backs of a few people. None of them were identifiable from the back of their heads: two men and a lady but they were clearly not Hitch.

With her cast braced against the balusters of the railing and her other leg tried to balance behind her, Ruby was more likely to end up flipping herself over the railing and into the dumpster at this rate than actually spot Hitch.

The window was firmly closed, and it was far too cold out to hope they would open it for some fresh air. One of the men—blonde and upright in his seat— in her line of view began gesturing wildly with their hands, obviously in the midst of a heated discussion.

Ruby let out an annoyed huff of air, as loud as she dared, and turned to carefully step down the fire escape before anyone left the Secret Society to catch her in the act.

Maybe in a couple of weeks when her cast was off, she could climb closer to the window and actually see who Hitch was meeting with inside. She imagined a hot date but remembered “everyone else” he mentioned. That train of thought didn’t need any further exploration.

Maybe it was a Housekeeper’s Union or they were plotting to take down Mayor Abrahams, or worse.

For the moment however she could only lean heavily on the rusted banister to swing her cast down the stairs as quietly as possible.

Ruby looked around furtively when she finally reached the bottom and headed in the direction of Main Street. Only a few car headlights swept past her as she limped down the road. She was fairly sure Hitch wouldn’t give her a lift if she waited for him by the car and might even be angry at the realisation that she had caught him with whatever gang of body-snatching aliens he was hanging out with. She had never seen Hitch truly angry, despite how much she needled him, and she had no wish to actually see it. It would be a long walk home.

She was just contemplating the idea of dropping by the Dime A Dozen for a soda to make the whole trek worth it when the clock tower chimed the half-hour. She had just enough time she decided. If she was quick.

Then, out of the side street Ruby had just passed, came the sound of shoes tapping down the concrete. Her hands froze over her pockets, where she’d been trying to find a spare quarter.

Ruby’s neck immediately went cold. She knew intimately well that no one normal hung out on side-streets and alleyways late at night, especially not in Twinford. Nevertheless, she kept walking, maybe leaning a little bit too much weight onto her cast in an attempt to walk without a sailor’s sway.

“What a lovely ruby red cast.” Came a soft voice behind her and Ruby’s hands clenched around the spare change in her fist.

“Thanks.” She called behind her quickly, cursing the fact that her mother would blow her top if this guy turned out to be Sabina’s newest best friend and Ruby had ignored him on the street.

“Not going to stop for a chat?” The man persisted, and Ruby slowed to a stop, just out of reach of the puddle of streetlamp light. If the man wanted to come any closer, he would have to stop in the glow of the light where she could see him, and he couldn’t see her. A distant part of her wondered where all this paranoia had come from, Twinford was a safe town after all, but she decided she was allowed to be paranoid after an accident that broke her leg and her head.

“Gotta be home for curfew.” She called, snapping her gum a lot more nonchalantly than she felt. “You know what the ‘rents are like.”

There was a chuckle from the darkness just beyond the streetlight and it made something in the back of Ruby’s throat clam shut. She swore she didn’t know this man, but the way her stomach was churning meant maybe she didn’t have to know him to fear him.

“Yes, I know what the ‘rents are like.” His voice was rich, and he spoke slowly like he really did want her late for curfew. His shoes clicked closer, once then twice and finally he was stood under the streetlamp, his hands spread like it was a spotlight instead like he was on a stage. “They must be worried about you.”

Heck, Ruby was worried about herself. The light caught the man’s cheekbones and made him seem gaunter, stranger than he really was. He wore a knee-length black coat, buttoned up against the cold breeze.

He wasn’t looking at her though, but rather at the cast on her leg. Ruby winced, at the list of everyone she knew having their names splashed across the whole thing but there was no way to hide it from him now.

“Is that a fly? What a peculiar choice.” As she watched him, cataloguing every feature she could possibly tell from the dim light, a smile grew across his face, his eyes unerringly finding hers despite the way she shrank back in the shadows.

Apart from his slicked-back hair (Was wet style back in fashion? Was wet style ever in fashion?) and those sharp cheekbones, he didn’t seem… wasn’t quite like the villain Ruby thought him to be. Sure, he was freaky and walking around late at night in the dark wasn’t exactly what people with their heads screwed on right did, but he was just a man. A man acting weird.

Ruby tried to remember this as she spoke.

“I can handle myself. They know I’m coming home at ten and will raise all hell if I’m not.” Not the most subtle warning but it was the best Ruby could do on short notice.

“I’m sure they will. How did it happen?” He pointed at her leg and a smile spread over his face.

Ruby kind of scuffed her cast out, kicking at the ground casually like it was nothing. “It was just an accident. I’m pretty clumsy, I just fell off my bike really.”

The man gave another soft chuckle. “An accident of course. I bet that was the last thing you were expecting. You should count yourself very, _very_ lucky.” Ruby didn’t like the emphasis the man put on the word, but he didn’t stop for her to complain.

“Thank God it wasn’t more serious than a break. There’s an awful lot worse out there these days.” He gave her a wink that made her consider just running, the doctor had said the fibula wasn’t even a weight-bearing bone so she might make it—but the man’s gaze locked her feet in place.

She didn’t say anything to the man, instead looking up at the clock tower again in case he got the hint.

“Ah, time is flying is it not?” This bozo really liked the sound of his own voice, but Ruby only shrugged.

“I hope we meet again Ruby Redfort. I think it may have been a bit more fun with you around.”

“What’s your name?” Ruby said suddenly, knowing with a sinking feeling that she’d never told this man her name. Sabina and Brant were popular, but this guy must’ve been new in town for the lack of gossip Ruby had heard.

“I suppose it’s slipped your mind?” He gave her a curt, neat bow and turned back to the side street he had emerged. “It was a… pleasure meeting you Ruby.”

The tapping of his shoes faded down the alleyway and Ruby didn’t move until she was sure he was gone before giving a long sigh of relief.

She felt oddly like she had been glanced over and miraculously gone unnoticed: a predator passing a hiding place with barely a sniff at the prey underneath.

Ruby started her walk home again, moving faster than before. She’d be lucky if she didn’t see any more weirdos tonight but as the strange man had said, she was lucky.

Ruby bypassed the shortcut to the Dime A Dozen entirely, wanting only to be home. As she started on the avenue that left the shops behind and would eventually lead to Cedarwood Drive, there was a squeal of brakes and a sharp, “Rubes?”

Turning around so quickly, she nearly tripped over her own feet, she saw Clancy astride his bike in the middle of the road where he must’ve been heading home before spotting her pitiful figure.

“Clancy, hey.” She makes a concerted effort to look like any kid out on a walk at nearing ten pm.

Clancy hopped off his bike and wheeled it closer, giving her a look like he knew her better than she knew herself.

That wasn’t saying much though.

“Ruby what are you doing? You’ve got to be home in twenty minutes.” He says, holding his watch up to prove his point.

“What, are you my babysitter too? First my parents, then Mrs. Digby and Hitch, and now my best friend is trying to keep me at home all the time.” She snapped. It’d been a long, strange night and the loud noise of Clancy stopping behind her had scared her more than she would’ve liked. Clancy’s frown softened.

He hadn’t really been angry, she knew, but the list of people who seemed to be against her was stacking up.

“I know it’s hard,” Clancy left a pause and Ruby slotted in about three different endings to that sentence before he began again: hard to remember; hard to be left out of something intangible; hard to piece together everything that’s been happening or happened or will happen. “But you’re not exactly in the best shape to be running around in the dark. What were you even doing anyway?”

Ruby kept up a stony silence, watching as Clancy’s frown steadily deepened and then suddenly cleared.

“It’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Hitch left the house and you followed to see where he went.” Ruby was beginning to dislike this whole ‘best friends tell each other everything’ business. Clancy seemed to be able to read her like a kindergartener’s book while Ruby couldn’t even guess at anything Clancy was thinking or even doing. He had been giving off the same weird feeling since she woke up, like he was constantly watching her to see what she was going to do, like a particularly excited post-graduate student leaning over a rat in a cage.

Ruby didn’t respond but Clancy didn’t seem too offended.

“We solved this mystery a few months back. This is Hitch’s book club, and that’s actually all it is. He’s reading Carrie by Stephen King at the moment.”

Clancy must be able to feel Ruby’s disbelief because he started laughing. “I’m serious, he annotates the books and everything. They have a rotating schedule for refreshments, and Hitch says it’s the only thing in his life that doesn’t cause him constant stress.”

He steered his bike back out to the middle of the street, and Ruby followed, feeling fairly stupid. “You can ask him about it yourself, or I can give you a lift to the Diner for one last doughnut before you break curfew, and I don’t see you for a whole year.”

Clancy’s bike had pegs screwed into the back wheel and she balanced her working leg and cast onto them and clutched his shoulders tightly as he pedalled back towards the centre of town.

After some examination, Ruby realised it was actually her bike, recognising the shape of the handlebars but she’s sure there was a perfectly good explanation for why Clancy had it in a bright shade of blue tucked away in her brain somewhere.

They were at the Doughnut in no time and then she had a jelly doughnut in her hand—last of the day’s batch and the second she’d had in a day—and Clancy had a bottle of lemonade that they traded sips from as they headed back to Cedarwood Drive.

“If it helps, you were as obsessed as you are now on the first time ‘round.” Clancy told her kindly, one foot on the pedal and one pushing off the ground to keep up with Ruby. “We spent nearly two months trying to track down where he went, and then at least three nights trying to listen in on different meetings and then one day he’s at the kitchen table reading and you ask what book it is, and he goes ‘oh, it’s for book club’. Boom, that’s it, the whole plan ruined.”

Ruby laughed with him but knew deep down that Clancy’s saved her another three months of waiting on the roof for Hitch to peel out of the driveway and then crawling through windows in dark alleys.

“Rube, you promised you would trust me.” He said, looking at her over her—his – bike. “I told you Hitch is harmless, to you and to me, and this is the second time I’ve seen you trying to tag him.”

Ruby opened her mouth to try and talk her way out of this situation when the full extent of Clancy’s words hit her. “The second time?” she asked, and Clancy was the one to turn his head away.

“You did this Friday too, which is when the Dime A Dozen gets their shipment in for Hitch’s weird coffee brand.”

“I didn’t see you.” Ruby spoke finally, passing the lemonade back to him. Clancy gave her a grin which had her smiling back despite the jelly on her lips.

“I’m just too good.” Clancy joked. “I wanted to give you a chance to ask me about it before you went on a one-woman hunt for Hitch.”

Ruby feels a flicker of embarrassment there, Clancy had been aware of her skulking around town for days. “I just feel like he’s…” she paused as her words jumbled somewhere between her brain and mouth. 

Clancy glanced out nonchalantly across the other side of the street while she stuttered and tried to remember what she’d been told. Breathe, picture the word, enunciate. This was happening less in the two weeks since she’d been home, and the doctors had said it would clear up completely within another two. For the moment Ruby was left with a mouth that was once quick and witty and now struggled to string a simple sentence together.

“What else do we know about him?” She said finally. 

Clancy hummed, handing the lemonade bottle and its last sip to her. “He has a mother, we think. He plays the clarinet, but not for us. He’s helped you out a lot and you guys really did get on well.”

Ruby threw the bottle into the nearest trashcan after draining the last sip. “You have to admit that it was suspicious, out of book-club context." She argued, Clancy had been suspicious of the guy the first time around, she had a right to be suspicious this time around. 

"It was kind of suspicious, let me guess, you thought he was part of some kind of secret society plotting to bring down the Mayor?" Clancy teased and Ruby turned her face so he couldn't see the flush on her face. It had made sense at the time!

"What exactly did he help me with? Eating breakfast every day?” Ruby changed the subject quickly and Clancy gave her a knowingly look, but let the subject drop. 

He swung his leg over his bike, trying to think of a plausible excuse. Ruby clambered up behind him, and he waited until she had a firm hold of his shoulders before he pushed off. He didn’t think Hitch would be pleased at all if Ruby fell off the back of his bike while she was technically supposed to be on bedrest.

“He’s covered for you a few times with your parents. And he’s taken you out of school once or twice when you had better stuff to be doing. Plus, he makes a mean scrambled egg.” He told her over his shoulder.

He broke off as they reached the decline towards her house and they both leaned into the next bend, Ruby whooping as they picked up speed. Hitching a lift on the back of Clancy’s bike was the most fun she’d had after three weeks of boredom.

Clancy finally pulled up outside of Green-Wood House. He was cutting pretty close to his own curfew, but he still waited as Ruby jumped off. Hitch’s car was conspicuously missing from the driveway.

“If you go inside now, are you going to stay there?” He was only half-teasing. “No going off to explore something without giving me a call.”

Ruby remembered that she had supposedly ditched Clancy right before she got her head knocked in and winced. “I promise I’ll call you first so you can come along.”

At least that seemed to perk Clancy up a little. “That’s all I ask.”

Ruby took half a step back towards her house, but the seriousness in Clancy’s voice made her pause. “I am sorry about whatever happened, I wouldn’t have left you on purpose.” She stated, meaning it. Whatever Pre-Accident Ruby had been up to had been a bad idea and now Clancy Crew was upset.

Clancy smiled; face tilted up towards her. “You don’t even know what you did. Or why.” He reminded her patiently.

Pre-Accident Ruby had hurt pretty much everyone, and Post-Accident Ruby had very little patience for her. “It was a stupid idea whatever it was. From now on, all adventures are a two-person job.”

Clancy laughed and Ruby scuffed her cast against the ground before finally speaking up.

“You think something happened to me.” It was not a statement. Clancy checked his watch, which had glow-in-the-dark arms and numbers. It was ticking very close to ten pm. Ruby stood her ground.

“Wasn’t I just going for a bike ride? How would it have been dangerous?” She questioned him, suddenly desperate to know, even as the pieces were still falling into place. “What would I explore without you? What was so important I left right after a whole day with you?”

There was something in the way he looked away from her, checking his watch with some distress that made her think that he knew something. Still, he shrugged and tried for a smile.

“I don’t know Rubes. I don’t blame you for whatever happened, and it wasn’t your fault you broke your leg.” He gave her shoulder a light push, towards her house.

“C’mon you’re going to undo all my hard work pedalling us down here. There’s no point in guessing what you did or didn’t do when we don’t know. Have a good night Ruby.” He said softly, his hands resting on his handlebars. He held her gaze steadily, and Ruby couldn’t find any lie in his face. But there was something here to be unfolded like the little frog on her desk, decoded like the books she had stacked up around the place. But Clancy was keeping it zipped.

Ruby swallowed, reluctant to leave. But Clancy was right because he was always right these days when she didn’t know what way was up. She let herself be pushed back.

“Thanks for the doughnut. And the lift. Don’t miss your curfew, okay?” She waved and he waved back.

She only looked back once, when she was opening the unlocked door. Clancy was still in the middle of the road, waiting for her to get in safely. The moon illuminated his face, and he looked sad, sadder than she’d seen him since she woke up and hadn’t recognised him, but he waved once more, just as she clicked the door shut behind her.

It was only as Ruby stepped into her house— a second before the grandfather clock began chiming ten o clock and Mrs. Digby appeared out her apartment to lecture her on timekeeping and wearing a coat and bedrest— that she realised she hadn’t asked what Clancy had been doing out and about at the same time as her.

Or anything about the weirdo in the alleyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally called Count 2: Electric Boogaloo but I figured that gave a little bit too much away. For the vibes though? Best chapter so far. 
> 
> And we're finally in the last stretch! There won't be an update this Tuesday unless I pull my shit together, but I'm really excited to finish this story up! 
> 
> If you enjoyed, please leave a comment or kudos! I really appreciate all the readers, especially as this fandom's so small!


	7. in my head i do everything right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not having you hacking up a pair of trousers to get your leg through the hole.” 
> 
> Ruby thought briefly of the pyjama trousers she had ‘hacked up’ to wear them comfortably at night and decided to hide them from her mother until her cast was off. 
> 
> “I think I have loose enough trousers. Flares are very chic now; I know Red likes them a lot.” 
> 
> Sabina sighed again, pursing her lips. “Not bell-bottoms.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from "Supercut" By Lorde! See, I don't just listen to Mitski.   
> I'm going to be updating throughout this week now that my exams have finished, and I'm hoping to be finished by next week honestly. I swear this is the beginning of the end! 
> 
> Thanks for reading and please leave a kudos/comment/bookmark!

Now that Ruby wasn’t suspecting Hitch as a criminal, she was trying to figure out what had actually happened to her. It was trickier than she thought it would be because apparently Pre-Accident Ruby kept all her plans to herself. Inconsiderate.

Currently, she was in the living room where Mrs Digby could talk to her for company with the radio chattering out some talk show. Bug had his head resting on her knee, alternating between twitching in his sleep and rousing himself to blink drowsily around the room.

But she had her own investigation to do, and Sabina had come home for a quick lunch before going back out to one of her many galleries. Ruby was close to begging her mom to take her along with her for some entertainment but knew Sabrina would never let her off bedrest.

Sabina was chattering about a new painting at work, which was supposedly the epitome contemporary modern art, while fishing through her salad for chunks of feta. Nodding along with only slightly feigned interest, Ruby realised she was fairly starved for interaction, especially now Mrs Digby had turned the television set around so she could watch it from her armchair, and so Ruby couldn’t see.

“Mum? Where was I when I broke my leg?” Ruby asked, hands holding tight onto her banana milk glass despite how it froze her hands.

“You’d gone out for a drama club.” Sabina said, chewing a mouthful of spinach carefully before speaking.

“Drama club?” Ruby repeated suspiciously and Sabina nodded excitedly along. Ruby was not sure if she needed anymore drama in her life. Really, pre-accident-Ruby had taken method acting far too far.

“Yes, I was so pleased! Imagine my horror when I had a phone call from the hospital to say you had ended up in the ICU!” Sabina waved her fork around, very talentedly not spilling any salad on the sofa.

Ruby bit at the straw of her banana milk (with extra cream and sprinkles, Mrs Digby was spoiling her) guiltily. Sabina sighed heavily.

“You could make it up to me by wearing some dresses for that cast to get some air.” Ruby didn’t bother explaining that she didn’t breath through her leg, and the cast didn’t need to breathe at all. “I’m not having you hacking up a pair of trousers to get your leg through the hole.”

Ruby thought briefly of the pyjama trousers she had ‘hacked up’ to wear them comfortably at night and decided to hide them from her mother until her cast was off. “I think I have loose enough trousers. Flares are very chic now; I know Red likes them a lot.”

Sabina sighed again, pursing her lips. “Not bell-bottoms.”

Ruby couldn’t bring herself to even jokes about bell-bottom jeans. “Not bell-bottoms.” She agreed and Sabina brightened up, putting her empty bowl to the side and standing up to tuck the blanket tighter around Ruby, fluffing the pillow under her plastered leg.

Mrs Digby had whirled through not ten minutes to do exactly that, and Ruby felt the cushion would explode if it was plumped anymore. However, she stayed silent and slurped a little more milk. This was really her own fault.

“Have you seen the latest bouquet that arrived for you? Absolutely gorgeous!” Sabina brought in the vase, where it had been cluttering up the dining room table with the other dozen bouquets.

Ruby squinted at it from her vantage point on the sofa. Carnations she recognised, in a sickly shade of pink and some bright red begonias. They were something new from all the lilies and roses that were taking over every surface of the house, but just as much of a visual and olfactory assault.

“What’s it say?” Ruby asked, as Sabina rifled among the blooms to retrieve the card.

“The message is… ‘Don’t forget about me!’.” Sabina looked between the card and Ruby who had paused with her glass half to her mouth.

“Bit insensitive.” Ruby pointed out.

“Bit insensitive.” Sabina agreed. “There’s no name on it.”

Ruby watched her mother placed the card on top of the tissue paper that had been wrapped around the bouquet, destined for the bin rather than joining all the other “Get Well Soon” cards around the room.

Sabina shook her head one last time and took the pile of trash out to Mrs Digby to get rid of. Bug whined next to her and she ruffled the top of his head.

“No point if they don’t sign the card.” Ruby told him quietly. She had spoken to Bug before the accident, she hadn’t gone this brand of bonkers in the last month. “I’ve already forgotten them.” She made a little explosion noise and a hand gesture to show just how much she had forgotten them to Bug.

Bug’s tail beat gently against the cushions before he closed his eyes again.

Ruby looked up as Sabina walked back in, already shrugging her coat on. Ruby realised she hadn’t even asked Sabina her other prepared questions, including the three about the weird man in the alley way.

“Off already?” Ruby asked and Sabina leaned over her to kiss her cheek. Ruby made a kiss noise back, reaching an arm up for a brief hug.

“Sure am! No rest for the wicked!” Sabina gave Bug a stroke that perked his ears up before heading towards the front of the house. “Remember, pad thai tonight! Don’t go anywhere!” She trilled, which was actually rather mean to say to the girl who supposedly couldn’t walk.

Ruby heard the front door click shut over the noise of the new Queen song on the radio and patted Bug’s head to get him to lift it from her knee.

What then followed was about a solid minute of Ruby trying to roll out from her cocoon of blankets without spilling her glass, crushing Bug or falling off the sofa completely. About halfway through Bug got up and left by himself because he wasn’t the one trapped in blanket hell.

Ruby finally managed to push herself up, grumbling under her breath and grabbed her crutches from where they were resting against the armrest.

She made her way to the kitchen where Mrs Digby, the traitor, was watching a crime documentary on the tiny TV on the countertop. Hitch, the potential traitor, was doing his job of preparing dinner, working around Mrs Digby who was frozen in the middle of the room as a highly dramatized stabbing took place on screen.

“I’ll leave this here.” Ruby said quietly to Hitch, placing her glass down on the counter.

“Sh! Oh God, she’s dead.” Mrs Digby hissed at her and Hitch and Ruby shared a quiet, conspiring smirk at each other.

“Do you want lunch?” Hitch asked, as quietly as possible. Mrs Digby waved a hand and turned the volume up. Ruby was trying to peer over her shoulder as inconspicuously as possible to finally get some sweet visually stimulating pixel action.

“Uh, yeah.” Ruby replied, distracted by the documentary. “Oh, she died too—wait, no salad for me.”

Hitch smirked again, but it was mostly to himself, as Ruby wasn’t looking at him anymore. He reached for a breadroll and set about making a Digby Club.

“TV rots your brain.” He commented dryly and both Mrs Digby and Ruby shushed him.

The programme cut to ads right as the detective reached to uncover the criminal killing so many young women and they groaned in unison, before Ruby looked quickly away from the TV before Mrs Digby turned around.

Something beeped in the utility room and Mrs Digby left to sort the laundry while Ruby leaned against the counter.

“You going down for your nap soon?” Hitch snarked mildly and Ruby rolled her eyes.

“Yeah I mean, I’ve got nothing else to do.” She shrugged and Hitch glanced up from slicing grilled chicken.

“If you invite Clancy over, we might end up with some extra pad thai for him.” He told her and Ruby smiled at the insinuation.

“I’ll ask him, his dad’s a bit nuts at the moment over his sister’s birthday, I think he’d appreciate being out of there for a while.”

Hitch nodded absently before clocking her still standing before him, propped up with her crutches.

“I’ll bring it up to you.” He offered and motioned his head at the stairs. Ruby smiled winningly at him.

“I knew there was a reason we kept you on.” She joked. She may not have liked him up until recently, but she knew that Sabina and Brant would never let him go.

Hitch hadn’t found out about her following him to his book club. Clancy had dropped her off on time, and it wasn’t like Hitch had a curfew to get back for. As far as she could tell, Book Club had gone well. She had seen a copy of Carrie left on the kitchen table and had flicked through it, just to see how dedicated Hitch really was.

He was pretty dedicated; Clancy hadn’t been joking about the annotations.

Hitch rolled his eyes and began spreading the mayonnaise. “If you’re any ruder, I’ll add tomatoes.” He warned and she booed all the way to the stairs.

She finally reached her room but didn’t check where she was planting her crutches as she went through the door. Her crutch cracked against the bottom of the door frame audibly, and the force of it nearly knocked her back down the stairs. The door wasn’t really wide enough for her cast and crutches, and it was only a surprise that Ruby hadn’t done it before.

She swore in surprise and then glanced back down the stairs in case Hitch had already finished her sandwich and was walking up behind her.

Quickly passing her left crutch to her right hand she crouched, her right leg stuck out in front of her uncomfortably. If she’d dented the wood or chipped the paint or something her parents would kill her. Maybe if she got some Wite-Out she could fix it quick.

As she leaned closer to the door jamb, she noticed a crack just where the wood met the wall, about the width of her pinkie finger. It looked purposeful, or at least, Ruby hadn’t done it with her crutch.

Squinting as hard as she could, she could see something in there, just beyond the light from her room.

Rocking backwards as far as she could, she snagged the strap of her school bag and tugged it across the floor towards her. She had a small flashlight attached to the zip and she clicked it on, angling it down the crack so she could see what was hidden inside.

The spine of a thin yellow notebook gleamed in the light of her torch and she cursed again, quieter and in awe.

She wriggled a finger in the crack and pulled the book out backwards, turning it over to confirm what she already suspected.

She had Notebook 625.

“Impromptu homework session?” Came Hitch’s calm voice above her and Ruby jumped, stuffing the notebook into her schoolbag. Hitch had just reached the top of the stairs with a clear view of her sat in her doorway with the book in her hands.

“Or have you just fallen over?” He stepped over her easily as she tried to use the door to haul herself upright, placing her sandwich onto her desk. He’d even put crisps on the side of the plate and a little stick in the roll to hold it together for her. Guy really worked for his paycheck.

“Dumped my bag here and nearly tripped when I came in.” Ruby lied, and Hitch came over to offer her a hand in standing. Ruby noted how he didn’t just reach out to grab her, like her dad had done once or twice when he was trying to help her off the sofa, but waited for her to take it. She remembered slamming her knee into the underside of the dinner table in shock when Hitch had taken her arm that one time and winced to herself.

She took his hand, in silent apology for the last time she had slapped him away, and he helped her up without even blinking.

“I keep telling you to tidy up after yourself.” Hitch pointed out, even as he started picking up glasses from her desk to take downstairs for her.

Ruby zipped her school bag shut and hung it off the back of her chair. There was no reason for Hitch to take a closer look at it, he didn’t want to do some eighth-graders homework for her. Still, she itched as he leaned over the chair to retrieve one final bowl with traces of the leftover chicken stew Hitch had made a few days ago.

He looked from Ruby, stood fidgeting by the door to cover the crack, although it was so small there was no way Hitch could’ve seen it, to the crockery in his arms and then back to her.

“Everything okay?” he asked. Ruby was kind of certain that at least one of plates he was holding was dripping some kind of food onto his shirt.

Ruby nodded and feigned a smile. Jeez, when would this guy just clear out and leave her to her secret notebook and sandwich?

“Yeah, for sure.” Her gaze darted to her desk, specifically her desk chair. She quickly tore her gaze away, so it was the sandwich she was eyeing up. “Hungry.”

“You get more and more suspicious every day.” He muttered as he swerved around her to head for the stairs, knowing she could hear perfectly.

“I hope that’s AP acting you’re working on, because you’re not fooling anyone.” He called behind him. 

“There isn’t an AP drama course—” she retorted but he was already halfway down the stairs and humming a song to himself.

She rolled her eyes but hobbled to the desk and pulled the book out as quickly as she possibly could. Right after she took a bite of the sandwich.

The book was simultaneously very helpful and very unhelpful.

She had peeked to the very end just because she could, and if there was something important back there she wanted to know now and not hours later when she had made her way through the whole month of December.

The very first thing she saw was: “CM was pushed off the roof. Parents arrived and helped Hitch off of the iron eye. LB and Blacker helicoptered in and landed on the roof, to handle clean-up as they were too late for help.”

Ruby reread the passage a couple of times and nearly slammed the book shut.

Maybe this was fanfiction.

A helicopter? Someone being pushed from the roof?

With a scowl she turned to the very front of the book, the 26th of November and began reading.

She’d spent so long looking for the book she wanted to at least see what she had said.

The whole book had so many inane statements that Ruby wasn’t sure what was significant and what was just put in for the sake of it.

Hitch had given her a “Dad Lecture” about trusting him at least four times judging by the tally she had inked at the top of the first few pages.

“I don’t trust Hitch.” She had printed around the middle of December.

“Hitch is dead.” Came between Christmas and New Year.

“Hitch is alive.”

Ruby looked away from the page to collect herself. Why was pre-accident amnesia Ruby so obsessed with Hitch? Nearly every statement revolved around the man. Amnesia Ruby had a right to be paranoid of the man who showed up out of nowhere, but pre-accident Ruby had known everything about him and still distrusted him.

The longest passage was one dated the 1st of January 1974. “Found out Hitch wasn’t the mole. CM was trying to frame him. CM had keyring. Didn’t get code before she fell.”

One infuriating thing about the truncated statements was that they were obviously so memorable to Pre- Accident Ruby that she didn’t bother giving details. The books were supposed to be secret, but it was clear that she was concerned anyone would come across them even accidentally and kept them short and sweet for deniability.

“2nd January: Note: Trust Hitch. He’s proven himself reliable and trustable. Wasn’t even mad I climbed out of the window to avoid him.”

The main sentence that finally made her reach for the phone she kept on her desk. It was shaped like a stack of books, the uppermost book forming the handset and lifting to reveal the keypad under it. She knew the number she typed in by muscle memory alone and had to trust her finger to hit the buttons without her brain interfering.

It rang twice before someone picked up.

“Alright?” Came a girl’s voice on the other end.

“Hello?” Ruby asked, realising with a sinking feeling that she had no clue which sister was speaking.

“Wait hold on. Crew residence, how can I help? Minny speaking.” Minny remembered her rehearsed speech too late and hoped it was only a secretary on the other end.

“Can I have Clancy?” Ruby asked and Minny made a noise of surprise.

“Ruby! Good to hear from you again, sure if you hang on, I’ll grab him.” Minny put the phone on the sideboard and hollered for Clancy so loudly Ruby nearly threw the phone across the room.

There were some footsteps and rustling before the sound of Mrs Crew trying to scold Minny came through the speaker. Finally, Clancy picked up, although Minny was arguing rather loudly with her mother about “free speech” and “helping Clancy’s friends”.

“Ruby?” Clancy asked after he had the phone to his ear for a second or two. He was used to Ruby talking his ear off before he even said hello, so her silence worried him.

“Clancy hey. I need to ask you some stuff.” Clancy breathed a sigh of relief although it was short-lived. Ruby sounded serious.

“I have… information.” She started and Clancy laughed nervously.

“Okay?”

“What happened on the Eye Hospital on New Years’?” Clancy would have sworn if his mother were not already on the warpath a few feet away. He tried ushering Minny away who rolled her eyes but took a few steps back towards the front parlour, hoping her mother would follow.

“For the last time, do not walk away from me while I’m talking to you!” Ruby decided to be kind and not classify that as a ‘shout’, but it was fast approaching one.

“What happened on the Eye Hospital on New Year’s Eve?” She demanded; eyes fixed on ‘helicopter’.

There was a sharp intake of breath from Clancy’s end. “Are you… Do you remember anything?” he asked, and Ruby bit her lip hard at the hope in his voice.

“No, not really. I’ve just got this… thing on it. And the others mentioned it when we went to the Diner.”

“Like a newspaper clipping?” Clancy turned his back on Minny and his mum, pulling a face as he tried to think of what to say. Hitch had said not to tell Ruby anything, but Clancy had promised not to lie to Ruby if she asked him any questions. It was clear from Ruby’s voice that she didn’t really know what she was asking, about Spectrum and the Count and Buzz.

“Kind of, yeah.”

Clancy grimaced and hoped Ruby would forgive him for omitting the truth a little.

“Well, the short story was, it was really weird basically, you saw this lady trying to break in to steal all the guest’s, um, valuables, yeah?” Clancy explained, trying to dredge up the official version of what happened.

“And all the guests were super rich so obviously this was an issue, right?”

Ruby made a ‘uh huh’ noise, knowing Clancy would probably hit upon the point in a minute or two.

“So you went to go sort her out, and then Hitch and Mrs Digby realised you weren’t with the others and came to help you. The lady ended up falling off the roof while she was trying to escape, and then the police arrived. Everyone was okay, except for obviously… her.”

Ruby made an annoyed noise, moving the book from her lap to the table, cradling her head in her free hand.

“And the long version?”

Clancy unknowingly made the same gesture across town, burying his face in his hands. Ruby was making this so much harder than it had to be!

“Is that ringing any bells though?” He asked hopefully. “Does it jog anything?”

“No. I can imagine the Eye Hospital, but I don’t remember what the top looked like. What happened to Hitch?”

“He, um, he actually got thrown off the building too.” That was in the newspaper’s story too.

Ruby’s eyes widened. “He was pushed?”

“Yeah, basically.”

“Was there a helicopter?” She pressed. The separate images weren’t congealing into a whole story for her.

“Yes!” Clancy cheered, and the arguing went quiet behind him, before Mrs Crew waved Minny into the next room and shut the door after them, finally. “Did you—”

“No I can’t remember anything. None of it is making sense.”

Clancy’s excitement dampened. “Where exactly are you getting this information from?” He asked.

“A… Diary.” Ruby decided on finally. There was no other excuse for the stuff she was telling him.

“Oh?” Clancy couldn’t remember Ruby having a diary, but he guessed it made sense. “What’s it saying?”

“I can’t tell what’s true or not. It sounds like some action film.” She said glumly and slumped onto her desk, glaring at the notebook out of the corner of her eye.

“Read me out a bit and I’ll tell you what happened or not.”

Ruby scanned the page for something that wouldn’t be mockable if it turned out to be made-up. “I don’t trust Hitch.”

There was a pause. “Was that a quote or a thought you just had?” Clancy teased.

“Jeez Clancy, a quote. I trust him more now I swear just… this diary is suspicious too.”

“Well I’ve told you before that you didn’t really trust him. Obviously him coming to help you that night helped you trust him more.” Clancy was very close to giving up the ghost and telling Ruby everything. He could hear the impatient confusion in her voice, and just about imagine the splitting headache she had.

“This book is telling me trust him too. Something about him not being the mole?”

Clancy took a steadying breath. It had been a month, maybe Ruby just needed a gentle push. “Look Ruby—”

“Master Crew, you mother is expecting you in the parlour.” Clancy jumped so badly he nearly dropped the receiver. He hadn’t heard the butler, a much less cool man than Hitch but still committed to his job, come up behind him. He wasn’t even sure if it was the butler’s job to fetch him for his mother, but neither him nor Clancy could argue with Mrs Crew.

“Clance?” Ruby asked, hearing muffled voices on the other end.

“Aw man, I’ll be right there.” He told the man and held the phone back against his ear.

“Ruby I’m so sorry, I need to go… sort this out.” He told her, knowing she would understand the annoyance behind his words, even if he couldn’t make it clear in the hallway. “Hang on ten minutes okay?”

Ruby was banging her head gently against her desk. “It’s okay Clance, I know what they’re like. Probably want to discuss how you need to widen that smile or lose a limb.”

Clancy laughed, but he had his eyes on the closed door he was expected in. Maybe this was a sign he shouldn’t tell Ruby.

Nah. Clancy had a feeling that Ruby was going to do something dumb soon. He’d rather she had him and knowledge of her secret life before she did.

“Ten minutes I promise.” He pleaded, and Ruby ‘mm-hm’ed and the line went dead.

Ruby replaced the handset and looked back at the book. The page she was turned to was thick and bumpier than the other sheets and she turned it over in curiosity.

A series of glossy paper squares had been stuck onto it, with annotations and little arrows pointing to and fro on the page.

The largest piece of paper was a long list of TV programmes and timings for their playing, on a channel Ruby hadn’t heard of.

Channel 42 was playing a movie marathon of various action films, judging by their titles.

Ruby read through them all and wrinkled her nose. There was no reason for them to be so carefully cut out and placed in her top-secret notebook, unless she was mocking them.

The movies went: “10am. Nobody Runs Forever. 12pm. The Man Who Knew Too Much. 2pm I Was An American Spy. 4pm. My Favourite Spy. 6pm. Blink and You Die. 6.05pm. The Professionals. 8pm. The End.”

Ruby squinted at her own cramped writing. “LAST WORDS.” Was legible, alongside “All legitimate films… Warning? Message?”

The last thing tacked onto the page was a cutting from what appeared to be the same magazine. It was an advert for a “new experience” with no post-code or address aside from ‘East Twinford’. Here her writing spiralled around it, theorising what exactly the experience was.

“Count is alive?” Ruby read out loud. 

A rough map was scribbled out below the ad and even Ruby recognised the main East Arch junction that made up East Twinford as it connected to the river.

Ruby cursed her decision to call Clancy so early in the book and reached for her phone quickly. This time when she dialled the number, no one picked up even on the second call. Obviously Minny had been sent to her room and no one else was nearby.

“Hello, it’s Ruby. If anyone could get a hold of Clancy and direct him to the nearest phone could you please tell him to ring me? It’s urgent. It’s actually very urgent and I need him to call me.” Ruby went to slam down the receiver and thought of the poor maid who would have to listen to her message. Or worse, Ambassador Crew. “Thank you.”

She pulled her left trainer and her skulking mac on.

Her notebook had flipped a few pages back when she put it down, and she was staring at the Eye Hospital page again.

‘Trust Hitch.’

Ruby gritted her teeth. Hitch would stop her, she knew this without a doubt. Even if she said why she was going now, Hitch would be annoyed that she hadn’t told him about the strange man in the alleyway and then he wouldn’t be so understanding about her new outing.

Plus, whatever was down on East Arch couldn’t be too bad, it was just an ad from a month ago.

There was half a notebook of blank pages opposite the last time she went to East Arch and she groaned.

In annoyance she snatched up a piece of paper and wrote quickly on the back of it.

“Got a bad hunch. Gone to East Twinford. Ruby thinks it’s ‘The Count’.”

She hoped one last time that ‘The Count’ wasn’t some metaphor she had been using in her diary for the patriarchy or ‘the man’ and left her room quickly and quietly. Everyone was so used to her clunking about on crutches, they wouldn’t expect her to move around without them. The house was busy in the daytime and no one would even blink at the front door opening. 

She slid out of the front door and began her way down to East Arch.

* * *

She took the subway. Who was she kidding, she couldn’t walk to East Twinford. The man at the turnstile let her through with a sympathetic hiss and wince at her leg and she slumped in one of the seats as soon as she could.

Her bone was supposed to be nearly healed, why did it hurt so much? Either way, she jumped off at her stop and then it was only five minutes towards East Arch.

East Arch was a main road in East Twinford, and just about bordered on Trashford. The buildings were all converted or actual warehouses, and there was nothing of interest to a thirteen-year-old girl at all. Even the shops were on a needs-basis like headquarters for a taxicab company, and window fitting and air-conditioning units.

She moved slowly through the near empty streets, untrained eyes trying to spot anything that might be on interest. A few vans made their way past, and there were various people heading back and forth from workplaces but nothing interesting. She nodded absently at a workman sat on the curb, in the midst of his tea break and moved on.

If wandering about some rundown part of town was the new experience the ad had meant, then she sure had it.

She’d reached the end, where the road had split off into a one-way system and a different road that circled back around to the industrial area, and she turned around to begin the long trek back to the subway station.

She would just have to tell Clancy she had gone to dinner when she came back and hadn’t been able to take his call. And bin the note.

She would never cut it as a detective.


	8. you told me we'd never survive// we'd be fighting in a suburban war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can call me the Count Von Viscount, at least for as long as you are still breathing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really struggled with making the Count look scary/write a scene I was happy with, while also balancing out the fact that RR is a kid’s book. I’m so painfully aware of unattended ten-year-olds searching up fanfiction and being scarred because that’s what happened to ME at ten. 
> 
> So general trigger warnings here (potentially going over the top with tagging, but I haven't had to tag any warnings in my writing before and really don’t want to catch anyone out because of my inexperience) and I’ve put some more in-depth ones in the endnotes, as well as a summary of the chapter/scene if you decide you want to skip, so please read them if you’re affected by any of these or if you are a child. 
> 
> Additionally, if you think that I’ve mis-tagged something or missed something out, please let me know and I’ll amend it, I’m hoping over-tagging will help avoid that, but I can't be sure. 
> 
> CW: Kidnapping, blood, torture, references to body horror and murder, description of blood, use of knives, brief use of time-period-typical ableist language.
> 
> Beginning of violence will be marked with an asterisk and begins just after ““Yes.” He enunciated clearly. “That’s why we’re in this filthy room, decaying next to the river and I have nothing fun to play with.”, with minor reference to violence beforehand. Violence continues until the end.
> 
> Chapter title is from 'The Suburbs' by Arcade Fire, Mr Little Jeans does a great cover. I appreciate any comments and kudos! I hope this scene is at least a satisfying peak of the story, and that I get the Count's voice right (he's best read in a stereotypical British accent, I'm sorry Ms Child I can't write in an American accent)

Ruby stared at the stretch of freshly painted wall in front of her. Minutes too late by the looks of it.

The worker spared her a single glance as he hammered the lid back on the paint. “Hope this wasn’t your doing kid.”

Ruby shook her head in annoyance, sore about the fact that she had walked past the man barely five minutes before, when he may not have finished repainting the graffiti. “’Course not. Do I look like I’m reaching those top spots? What exactly did it say?”

The worker tossed the paint tin back into his van. “Same rubbish it always says. Some romantic trash. ‘Remember me’ like it would last longer than a few weeks up.”

He gave her and her cast another squint. “Graffiti is an offence, kid.”

“So’s calling me kid.” The city worker didn’t really smile but he seemed more annoyed at the fact he was still standing in the cold than at the fact he was still talking to her.

“Don’t let me catch you tagging anything. That goes for your friends too.” He walked off before Ruby could ask him anything else.

Ruby huffed, still stood on the pavement, looking back at the wall as the man got in his van and left immediately. What city worker really just let a kid with a broken leg go off on their own without offering a lift in this weather?

What kind of person wrote ‘Remember me’ on a wall?

Ruby stuffed her hands in her pockets and turned straight into the chest of a man she didn’t even see sneak up on her.

His hand clapped over her mouth before she could even hope to open it and he swept her legs out from under her, and Ruby hit her head for the second time in an outrageously short amount of time.

Ruby awoke in a room lit only with a bare lightbulb hanging above her like some kind of interrogation tactic. It was bright enough for her to wince so perhaps it worked.

Her hands were bound firmly to the arms of the chair she was in, while only her left leg was bound to the chair leg. Her plastered leg was left free, perhaps because the doctor had kindly saved her kidnapper some time beforehand.

Ruby felt calmer than she thought she would’ve been in this kind of situation and chalked it down to the concussion. It wasn’t like she had a history of being kidnapped and held hostage.

There were still spots dancing over her vision and she groaned, trying to focus on a water-stain on the opposite wall beyond the pool of light, to let her eyes adjust.

“Oh fantastic. You’re awake.” A voice drifted over from her left and Ruby snapped her head to follow it so quick her vision swam again. She hadn’t even noticed anyone else in the room.

She couldn’t make out any features, but she thought maybe that it was a man. Her stomach was roiling, and she clamped her eyes shut as her head swung forwards. “You don’t look too great.”

“You knocked me out.” She muttered at him and he made an affronted noise.

“I hardly did anything, you just about knocked yourself out.”

Ruby opened her eyes a crack. She didn’t have her glasses on, and she wondered if they were still laying at the foot of a whitewashed wall or if this man had them.

The man in question stepped forward, striding with purpose across the wooden floor to stand just out of reach of her, his hands twitching strangely at his sides.

“So once again, I have you in my clutches. It was so sadly easy to catch you again, you agents are so predictable. You didn’t even learn from the first time this happened.”

“You’re the strange man from the alleyway.” Ruby said, a realisation that had come to her a few moments ago but there been no way to insert that little comment alongside anything he was saying.

The strange man from the alleyway seemed a bit put-out that she’d interrupted.

“You know me as something much more formidable than simply the man from the alleyway.” The man said snidely, and Ruby didn’t even bother appearing bashful.

“Am I right in assuming that you’re the reason I don’t know you?” She asked. The man came closer, grinning in her face. His teeth were far sharper than she remembered them being the last time they’d met.

She flinched away from his hand as it came up close to her face, and he chuckled. A fingertip grazed the glossy pink scar at the edge of her hairline before he plucked her barrette out of her hair and crossed the room to toss it from the window.

“No need for a repeat of last time.” The man told her conspiratorially. “Now we shouldn’t be interrupted by that spy friend of yours.” Ruby had no idea why her barrette was so important to him. It was the only one she could find in her box of trinkets even if it had a weird fly model on it.

“Spy friend?” Ruby couldn’t stop herself. It wasn’t her fault she was curious. “I don’t have a spy friend.”

“You were a better liar when you had all your memories.” The man sighed. “Must’ve been all the spy training you had.”

Something was pressing itself rather insistently against Ruby’s skull and it was all she could do to focus on the man in front of her instead of the splitting headache forming behind her eyes.

“Listen bozo, I don’t know who you are or what you want but you’ve got the wrong kid—”

“Fine, fine.” He spat, unbuttoning his long black coat swiftly. “Did your ‘rents never teach you that it’s rude not to remember someone after they nearly kill you multiple times.”

Ruby didn’t know how to respond to that. Frankly, no they hadn’t.

“Multiple times!” He repeated, like it would make more sense if he said it again. “Although perhaps, I could reuse some old ideas if you don’t remember them in the first place. Either way, Ruby Redfort, maybe this will jog your memory.”

He flung his coat to the side, revealing a well-tailored black suit. “You can call me the Count Von Viscount, at least for as long as you are still breathing.”

Ruby thought of the journal she had pulled out of the door jamb and was hit with a rush of vindication. She wasn’t just journaling about how the bourgeoisie were keeping her down, the Count was actually trying to hurt her. Vindication quickly gave way to dread when she realised the threat was much more than metaphorical. Maybe this once she wouldn’t have minded a bit of social oppression seeing as the alternative was… this.

The Count—though it was undoubtedly not his real name—had his hands splayed like he was expecting applause.

Ruby, with her hands firmly tied to the chair, did not applaud.

The Count’s face twisted in disgust even though it really truly wasn’t her fault.

“It’s not ringing any bells.” Ruby drawled and would’ve snapped her gum if she hadn’t accidentally swallowed it when she was thrown to the floor.

“I daresay they should start ringing soon. We have plenty of time before your friends at Spectrum arrive… If they ever do. With no smart-kid skills they simply ditched you, hm?”

Ruby was trying her best to process everything that was being said, but maybe another concussion on top of a previous traumatic brain injury was too much. Maybe this guy was a jilted maths champion. Jilted maths champion’s _dad_ , he seemed far too old to be going after children on a personal vendetta.

“No barrette to track, no little codes left for them to follow.” He stepped closer again and tapped her wrist where her sweater sleeve had been pushed up so the rope could be tied. “No Bradley Baker Watch.”

Ruby realised distantly that maybe the tan lines on her wrist that had been bugging her for weeks were due to something as simple as a misplaced watch.

“Who the hell is Bradley Baker?” Ruby snapped.

The Count chuckled. “That’s exactly what he said too.” He laughed again at his own joke, like a loser, and returned to the table he had been stood over earlier, examining something on it with barely concealed glee. 

Ruby scanned the room for anything that could help her, but it was so bare there was nothing useful. A pile of fly-tipping in the corner: a chair that had been reduced to pieces and some metal work that wasn’t even good enough for scrap. The lightbulb. The Count’s small table of… Ruby didn’t want to think about the table.

Ruby squeezed her eyes closed, hoping it might abate some of the pressure in her head. She couldn’t ever remember a Count, none of her parent’s acquaintances were Counts or Countesses and if Clancy’s dad had ever had a Count to visit there was no way she had ever met him.

Spectrum though. Ruby had had a split-second image of a white corridor flash in her mind’s eye and couldn’t place it anywhere she knew. A white corridor and a white room. Something to ponder while this man talked her to death.

There was one other insistent image in her head: that dumb fly Clancy had drawn on her cast. That only made her think of Clancy though and realise maybe she should’ve told him a little more about the man on the street before they gone to get a doughnut. Or put a little more detail in her note.

Maybe she should’ve been a better friend these last few weeks, Clancy had never been resentful or annoyed by the gaping hole where her memories had been. He’d always been there with doughnuts and spy movies.

Spy movies.

Ruby’s eyes flew back open. Had Clancy been trying to tell her something? How had the Bond movie ended?

Right, the magnetic watch. In hindsight, maybe she shouldn’t have lost this supposed Bradley Baker watch.

Well, she guessed that all she had left now was buying time until she could figure out what this lunatic wanted with her.

“So how exactly do I know you?” Ruby asked. The Count was on the other side of the room, but whatever he was doing was covered by his body. He sighed deeply and Ruby curled her lip. The guy obviously expected her to know who he was, but she was convinced that whatever had happened to her outside of the Old Town Hall was entirely down to him.

“Let’s start small.” He called over his shoulder, and she heard the distinctive sound of something metallic being placed down despite how he was trying to drown it out. “Four weeks ago, you were found unconscious in downtown Twinford.”

He turned around with a click on his heel and watched her intently.

“You did something. You kidnapped me before.” She pieced fragments of ideas together and he tutted, shook his head.

“You came to me entirely of your own volition Ruby Red.” He reminded her.

“That’s categorically wrong, why would I come and find you?”

“You were… concerned about my welfare. I left a note or two out for you, knew you would sniff down the trail like you always did and showed up right at my door.”

Ruby pressed her shoulder against her head as hard as she could, trying to cut through the fog in her brain. “The TV guide. That graffiti.”

The Count clapped his hands like a show was coming together in front of him. “Yes! Although they’ve whitewashed it away now. I rather thought that was a good one, you immediately suspected me. The previous you did at least.”

He reached behind him and the pliers he held in his hand glinted in the light. Ruby swallowed, having an increasingly bad feeling for what they were going to be used for.

“Unfortunately, that good-looking croc-bait came and rescued you once again. And now, even after all this time, you’ve ruined my plans again.” She clenched her fists as tight as she could, tucking her nails under her palms but there was only so far she could move under the rope.

“I’m not even being paid for my work now. No Casey Morgan, no funding.”

“Is—” Ruby had to pause to try and remember how to use her tongue again. Her mouth was so dry. “Is that why we’re here?”

She pointedly flicked her gaze to the solitary lightbulb hanging in the empty room. The Count leaned over her to force her hands open, his own sharply manicured nails digging into her skin to uncurl her pinkie finger. With the way he was leaning over her, Ruby saw exactly how his eyes narrowed to slits in determined anger.

***“Yes.” He enunciated clearly. “That’s why we’re in this filthy room, decaying next to the river and I have nothing fun to play with. Even the nice hall I had has been crawling with your lot since I vacated. Frankly it’s _gauche_ , I had to kidnap you myself.”

“Interest rates are very high at the moment. Have you considered just working as a truck driver or something?” That was precisely the wrong thing to say and the Count didn’t even bother answering her before slapping her hard across the face. Ruby gasped, having been hit very little— if at all her entire life— but could only blink away the stars in her vision and be glad it wasn’t her nails.

“So, I am doing this for free, no salary, no pension. You may have stopped me once or twice before, and I could potentially give you to someone who would give me an awfully large sum of money, but to put it simply, no cheque could come close to the pleasure of killing you myself.”

The Count appeared to pause for Ruby to add in her own commentary, but she wisely kept her mouth shut. He smiled and it didn’t reach his eyes.

“So, I had you in my clutches again, and Spectrum hadn’t even found me. You _somehow_ slipped and hit your head and then Hitch had to come and save you again.”

Something clicked in Ruby’s mind. Her spy friend. Hitch. Clancy telling her Hitch had helped her out of several scrapes. A white corridor. A fly.

“Slipped?” She croaked. “Or was pushed?”

The Count clamped her nail between his pliers and Ruby tried very, very hard to keep still. He didn’t need any more job satisfaction, but the knowledge of what exactly was going to happen to her was choking up the back of her throat.

Ruby thought suddenly of Clancy, flapping impatiently at the telephone table in the hallway, listening to her message and re-dialling her phone number again and again. She thought of Hitch, coming upstairs with a plate of food to cheer her up and finding the note on her desk. The hope the image gave her was too much in contrast with the Count looming over her, so clearly hellbent on hurting her and she swallowed, pushing away any thoughts of Hitch and Clancy or her parents.

“I thought it simply wouldn’t be any fun to torture you if you didn’t even know why I was doing it, but I was wrong.” His grip tightened on her hand and she watched him stonily. If she was going to have to submit to this, she didn’t want to take the coward’s option and look away.

“It’s just as fun as I thought it would be. Really you deserve something a little more impressive: sharks, wolves, maybe those jellyfish again. But this works fine too. Traditional. Old-fashioned even.”

He yanked her nail hard, almost before he had really finished speaking and Ruby bit down hard on her tongue to contain any cries.

The Count looked up at her expectantly, waiting for a reaction and she swallowed down blood. There were definitely tears in her eyes, but she strained against blinking for as long as she could, giving him stony eye contact so they didn’t overflow.

She didn’t see where the detached nail went. She didn’t want to see it.

He gave a disapproving noise and moved on to the next nail. This time Ruby couldn’t look at the twist he employed to detach it fully and focused hard on not throwing up or screaming.

By the third nail she was screaming and trying to aim kicks into his side despite the fact she was just chafing her leg against the ropes.

The Count was laughing, leaning back on his heels to watch her cry. Something intrinsically human was missing from behind his eyes and she was certain, more certain of anything she had encountered in the past month, that he was completely, clinically psychotic.

He abruptly grew bored after the fourth nail and granted her a minute reprieve as he headed back over to his little table, wiping her blood off of his pliers onto her jeans as he went.

It was only then, when the Count went back to his workstation to replace the pliers with something worse, that Ruby had an unimpeded look at the window.

The window had not been closed since the barrette was tossed out of it into the river below, possibly because he didn’t believe that even Ruby could slip through the tiny sash window. She would struggle reaching it at all with her cast. Really, the doctor who applied her plaster cast had given the Count a huge advantage.

Ruby was listlessly staring at the reflection of the lightbulb off the glass, catching her breath and trying to slow the tears, when she realised distantly that there was movement behind the window.

Something was peeking up every few seconds, briefly blotting out the view of the city lights in the distance. Ruby squinted her eyes, fighting her own astigmatisation to focus what it was.

She made direct eye contact with Clancy Crew for a split second before he ducked back down again.

“What are you doing?” She started mouthing at him when he next chanced a look up, and he shook his head firmly. She wasn’t sure if he was even reading her lips properly and tried not to let her eyes well up again as she saw him again, his eyes fixed on the Count’s back, but mouthing ‘It’s okay’ at her.

The Count turned around with a flourish and Ruby nearly whimpered at the sight of the knife in his hand. She didn’t dare look at Clancy again, not even peeking as the man monologued again about how he had finally beaten her and her inability to remember him, waving his knife about to punctuate the speech Ruby was ignoring.

He had his back to the window, once again blocking her view of Clancy but as long as he did not see her friend slowly clambering over the sill Ruby didn’t mind.

She had a vague plan forming, hindered by the throbbing pain of her split lip and fingers. She just had to talk, just had to distract the Count until Clancy could call the police or _anyone_. Blood was seeping between her lips and her voice cracked when she tried to speak.

“Surely it would be better for you if I didn’t recover my memories. At least that way I wouldn’t remember everything stupid plan you had and how easy it was for a school kid to ruin them every single time.” Ruby interrupted the Count, her voice wobbly but purposely raised to give Clancy some leeway to hook his leg over the sill and wriggle inside.

Her words were cut off by a sob as the Count pressed the knife harder against her collar bone. Clancy wouldn’t hold it against her if she cried a little, she just wished she was in the position where she didn’t have to.

“Seriously,” she choked out. “It’s taken you four weeks to even catch me again, and I’m crippled.”

Ruby had the barest glimpse of Clancy over the Count’s head before he grabbed her by the collar and punched her with more force that she really thought possible. Her nose exploded with pain and her vision went black for a long second. She couldn’t stop the tears running down her face and made a broken groan of a noise which only aggravated her nose more.

She had seen that Clancy was unarmed in the split-second glance at him and Ruby rather resented him for not bringing the police or, at worst, her gang of friends. Even, despite her mild dislike of him and regardless of whether he was a spy or not, she would prefer Hitch climbing in after him, possibly with something a little more deadly than his fists. 

It was at this moment Clancy Crew decided to act, but Ruby had to admit that was the only time it was really safe for him to snatch up the broken chair leg in the corner of the room and swing it with all his five foot four might against the Count’s head.

Through a red haze of blood and tears, Ruby watched the Count drop like a sack of bricks, a wet sounding thud echoing around the tiny room. She gasped, tears coming harder now with sick relief unfurling in her chest.

The Count did not move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Detailed CW: Ruby is knocked unconscious, kidnapped and punched twice later in the scene. The Count threatens her with a knife multiple times and cuts her once with it, but that isn’t graphically described save for description of pain. Body horror (focused on fingers) with descriptions of blood. The Count is also hit and is knocked out. 
> 
> Summary: Ruby finds the ‘new experience’ hinted in her notebook at East Arch (graffiti left by the Count that says ‘remember me’) where she also runs into the Count. She is knocked unconscious and wakes in a room with the man from the alley, who reintroduces himself as the Count.   
> He reveals that he lured pre-accident Ruby to East Arch and then subsequently Old Town Hall through the TV guide movies hinting at his return, then the graffiti. It’s hinted Ruby escapes the the first time by luck, but she is injured in the process, hitting her head/breaking her leg where Hitch then finds her.   
> The Count reveals to Ruby that Hitch is a spy, which leads to Ruby remembering scenes from Spectrum and also the fly that Clancy drew on her cast, although her full memories do not return. The Count threatens Ruby and attacks her, but Clancy arrives and knocks the Count unconscious to protect Ruby.


	9. and i miss you like a little kid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Clancy.” Was just about the only word Ruby could manage, leaning forward as far as she could in her bonds to get closer to him. 
> 
> Clancy threw the makeshift bat aside and ran over to her, holding her head up as it lolled back on the chair. Ruby's head fell heavy into his hands, letting him wipe the tears away from her cheeks with a thumb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Motion Sickness by Phoebe Bridgers, which I didn't actually super like until I started writing this and projected onto it. I'm sorry Ms Bridgers.
> 
> Some more content warnings, but it's not nearly as graphic as before: Kidnapping (again), Violence, Vomit. Mentions of a knife. Descriptions of Blood. 
> 
> This is (technically) the end of the story! Just editing this chapter took me about 4 hours, I would've had it up yesterday but then I was still adding to dialogue and backstory and it just kept. going. The epilogue will be up soon, as I've only written about half of it so far, but I'm working on it lmao. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter (I'm second guessing the italics now and may come back to edit that in a way that isn't irritating whoops, but how else will I show a good old fashioned flashback?) Please leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed! I really appreciate all of them :DD

“Clancy.” Was just about the only word Ruby could manage, leaning forward as far as she could in her bonds to get closer to him. 

Clancy threw the makeshift bat aside and ran over to her, holding her head up as it lolled back on the chair. Ruby's head fell heavy into his hands, letting him wipe the tears away from her cheeks with a thumb.

“Ruby?” He said a few words that his ambassador father would not be pleased with and fumbled at his watch with his free hand. “Hitch is on his way Ruby; he’s going to help. You don’t know but Hitch is actually a—” 

“Secret spy?” Ruby asked but it was far more like a whisper. The look on Clancy’s face might be funny later when Ruby wasn’t about to pass out. 

“I promise you, when we get you out of here safe, I’ll tell you everything okay?” He looked so concerned that tears welled up in Ruby’s eyes again. “Just hold still and I’ll get you out.” 

There was a buzzing noise and Ruby focused her eyes on where Clancy’s shaking hands were trying to line up the ropes around her hands with a tiny blade on his watch. 

“Bond watch.” She muttered and Clancy gave her a breathless, distracted grin. 

“Yeah exactly! It’s more of a Bradley Baker watch though. Do... Do you remember?” he asked, cutting through the ropes on her left hand, but Ruby couldn’t reply, as right at that moment, the door to the left of them imploded with no small amount of noise. 

_ The girl braked sharply, the back wheel of her bike fishtailing slightly on the wet concrete as she came to a stop. She was in East Twinford, following a hunch that would rival one of Clancy’s.  _

__

_ She hadn’t come out quite knowing what she was looking for, but as she stared down one of the many side streets that sprawled across this area of Twinford, she knew she had found it.  _

__

_ It had started with the TV guide Mrs Digby had shown her. A channel was showing a decent selection of movies, but somehow the Redfort’s, with their special cable channels and new TV system, couldn’t access it. The girl had sighed and tutted along with her: there had been a film supposedly premiering during it that she hadn’t seen or even heard of.  _

__

_ It was only later, when she had filched the TV guide from the coffee table to look at properly, that she started to get a bad feeling. One of the advertised movies simply did not exist. Later still, the girl connected the slogan “Blink and You Die” with a certain villain’s last words (that wasn’t her fault, she was doing everything she could to forget that particular memory). When she watched the channel with Clancy, shamelessly using his dad’s even better cable service, the time slot for that particular movie had simply been five minutes of endless static, where Clancy alternated between slapping the remote, slapping the TV and sighing heavily, that cleared in time for a local advert for a new club. She  _ knew _it was weird that she had never heard of the film._

__

_ That led her back to the advertisements.  _

__

_ The TV guide had promised a club where the member could have a “new experience” and “rediscover an old friend”. There hadn’t been an address, or even really the name of the club. All that was on the ad was a tangled mass of lines, obviously representing roads, and a small circle to indicate where the club headquarters were. The lines had no markings to guess which road was which, and she had left it tucked inside her yellow notebook. After Clancy had dropped her home, she turned back out of Cedarwood Drive and laid rubber the whole way to East Twinford to follow her hunch.  _

_ And she had been right that she would know what exactly it was when she saw it.  _

__

_ It was the rear wall of a warehouse, where it backed onto one of the side streets.  _

__

_ Large letters were painted on whitewashed wall, in red paint. It had been done by a brush, the girl noted somewhat detachedly, with little trickles of paint bleeding off the purposeful lines. _

__

_ The whole effect was rather gorey.  _

__

_ “REMEMBER ME RUBY RED?”  _

__

_ She sat astride her bike for a few silent seconds, eyes scanning the angles of the slogan, before turning around and cycling as hard as she could back West. To safety.  _

__

_ She slowed somewhere in the City Centre, a new thought occurring to her. She didn’t even bother getting off her bike, pulling her bag around to the front of her chest and rummaging in the front pocket for the paper and pencil she knew was there. It was only just beginning to turn dark, and she glanced around her quickly. The side-street was empty, and she didn’t know whether that was a help or a warning.  _

__

_ No time to think about that. He knew where she lived, he was probably waiting near her house. If she could put a note in the tree Clancy would know that he was in danger. Hitch would help them both.  _

__

_ She scribbled a sequence of letters down, muttering sums under her breath. The practice she had had for this skill served her well and she had only been stopped for a minute when she finished. _

__

_ Her brain whirred, trying to decide on the best plan of action. If she could reach Amster through the backstreets and warn Clancy, and if she could call Hitch, they would know she was trying to get back to them.  _

__

_ Unless it was too late for them.  _

__

_ She folded the note messily into the easiest shape that came to mind, corners not lining up properly and stuffed it into her jacket pocket. She would call Hitch when she was biking towards him and get him to meet her halfway. She didn’t fancy being alone on the streets with a madman.  _

__

_ She raised her hand to slap it on the Escape watch; Hitch would have to deal with the wind interference and her shortness of breath as she rode home.  _

__

_ A hand shot out of nowhere to clamp around her wrist and she yelped, unable to stop herself. The alien hand yanked her hard, much harder than the girl could resist, and she fell towards the stranger, the hard planes of her bike tangling in her legs.  _

__

_ “Now, we don’t want to worry anyone would we?” A familiar voice crooned, keeping her hands firmly away from her watch. He tugged at her again, and she kicked at the bike, trying to get her legs under her to fight back. If she could just catch him in the groin hard enough, he might back off and she could call Hitch.  _

__

_ A final yank had her head meeting the curb hard enough to make her vision white out for a second, unable to catch herself to cushion the fall. The person holding her wrists rolled her roughly onto her back and leaned over her with a grin.  _

__

_ “So, you do remember me.” The Count smirked, confirming all of her suspicions and the girl made some kind of desperate hiss. Her vision was so blurred there were two Counts and she blinked until they swam together to form one grinning murderer.  _

__

_ “What do you—” she gritted out and his lip curled in annoyance.  _

__

_ “None of that just yet.” He told her matter-of-factly and then her head hit the pavement again and the darkness swallowed her up.  _

Ruby, who had not even heard people on the other side of the door, flinched hard, her free hand coming up to grab Clancy. Clancy himself had lunged to protect her face from the splinters and whoever was kicking their way in. 

Hitch, the supposed secret spy, was standing in the ruin of the doorframe, with a gun pointed into the room. It swept over Ruby and Clancy to land, rather uncertainly, over the Count who hadn’t stirred the whole time. 

“Christ, you two.” He muttered, and Clancy gave a sigh of relief and started on Ruby’s other hand. Ruby was fairly sure her face was busted beyond recognition, and she’d started shaking so hard Clancy was having a hard time getting the watch to safely cut the rope, but something softened in Hitch’s face as he saw her.

Hitch strode over to them immediately, pulling a small blade out of his pocket. Ruby recoiled at the glint of it, the last few hours far too raw to reason with herself that Hitch was to be trusted, but Hitch threw it aside without hesitation, instead untying her bound leg by working the knots out gently. He angled his body carefully so she couldn’t see the events unfolding behind him. 

There were people filing in after Hitch, but Ruby couldn’t see them in any detail without her glasses. A tall young woman, an older man with a grizzled face and a dozen of others that dripped out of her mind as soon as she saw them. They were talking and surrounding the man on the floor, more than a few cutting concerned looks over at Ruby but her gaze had frozen on the Count’s single arm which Hitch’s bulk didn’t quite cover. His nails were intact but stained with blood. Her blood. 

Suddenly both hands were free, and she was reaching for Clancy immediately, who held her back just as tightly, pulling his sleeve over his hand to begin blotting blood from her nose, murmuring something she couldn’t hear. 

Clancy turned her face, very gently, so she was looking at him instead of the Count’s outstretched hand. Her eyes took a long moment to focus on him, and he blinked his own tears away hard when they finally did.

His lips were moving but Ruby’s exhausted brain couldn’t keep up, and she only fisted her hands tighter in his windbreaker, heedless of the blood she was smearing across it. Pain was spiking throughout her body and she could feel the darkness approaching that would take it away. 

“Ruby…Going to pick you up… Still…” Hitch’s words were unclear and Ruby’s mind was too distant to comprehend them coherently. She made a noise that might have been affirmation but was mostly just pain. 

Everything was more or less a blur as Hitch gently levered his hands under her in the chair to pick her up, being careful to support her head. 

“Hey,” She murmured drowsily. “Left a note.” 

“Hey kid. How many times are we going to do this?” Hitch looked down at her, and she didn’t recognise the look in his eyes. It was far too difficult to parse at that moment in time so she just tried to smile at him instead. Her split lip dislodged the clot and she felt blood dribble down her chin. 

She recognised the new frown on Hitch’s face and tried to relax her lip with a pained noise. 

“Don’t do anything, we’re taking you straight to hospital. You’re safe now.” Hitch told her and Ruby nodded minutely. Hitch was talking quietly, clearly aware of how sore her head was but the light was beginning to make her eyes burn. She shifted her gaze from Hitch to a spot on the ceiling before she realised something was missing.

Her eyes rolled to try and find Clancy, only managing a strangled groan when she couldn’t find him. The irrational thought of the Count having caught him came to her and she flailed in Hitch’s arms, hitting Hitch in the chest with a bloody hand. 

“Clancy’s right behind us, you’ll see him when you’re safe in the car.” Hitch’s voice was soft as he somehow knew what was wrong, not even blinking at the poor hit she landed. 

“I’m okay Rubes.” Came Clancy’s voice from somewhere close and Ruby drew in a shaky breath. 

“Just relax. You’re safe, no one’s going to hurt you.” Hitch told her, and the mouldy walls around them started to spin and roil as he began walking. 

Ruby tried her hardest to keep her eyes open, to focus on the face of the man above her and where exactly they were going, but the pain was hitting in waves across her face and hands and her ribs where she had fallen earlier, and everything was a struggle. 

“You can go to sleep Ruby; I’ll be here when you wake up. You’re safe.” Clancy was saying in the background and she caught a glimpse of him beside her, tear streaked and pale but alive, and with a sigh she closed her eyes.

_ The girl was retching before she had even opened her eyes. Concussion, a distant corner of her mind noted, but she was too busy trying not to fall into her own sick to pay it much mind.  _

__

_ When she opened her eyes, the light was pulsing and bright. She tried her best to force them open, squinting painfully against the press of the fluorescent strips, knowing acutely that she was not safe here.  _

__

_ A man was looming over her, just far away enough that he couldn’t get vomit on his shoes. _

__

_ “You.” She spat out the word out around a mouthful of foul saliva when she finally had her breath back.  _

__

_ The Count laughed, like she had finally gotten her lines correct. “Yes, me. It’s been a while, we’re due quite the catch up here.” He agreed, and leaned over, nudging her leg with his shoe. “I bet you thought I was dead?”  _

__

_ The girl could keep her eyes open for a little longer now, and from a quick glance around the hall she couldn’t see anyone except her and the Count.  _

__

_ Her hands weren’t even tied.  _

__

_ “I went to East Arch looking for you. I knew you weren’t dead when they couldn’t find your body.” She said, determined to show him that it hadn’t been a surprise at all. Only a sad expectation that he was back to do some more pathetic kidnapping attempts. She hadn’t even been tortured yet, except for the dull conversation.  _

__

_ “I knew you would miss me! It was so boring without me, hm?” Now that she had stopped puking, the Count seemed more confident to approach. The girl’s wide eyes tracked his every movement, and only wavered when he reached out to grab her hair clip, roughly tugging it out of place with no regard for the hair that was yanked away with it. He held it up to the light for a brief second before letting it fall from his fingers to the floor.  _

__

_ The girl’s hand twitched, about to reach for it just before his size-7 wooden-soled boot came down to crush it. It immediately splintered under his weight, and there was a sad beep as the tracker device was reduced to scrap metal. _

__

_ The abruptness of it made her jump, and suddenly she didn’t want to reach for her watch to send a signal. Her arms were already cropping up with dark violet bruises from the fight on the street and she couldn’t rid herself of the image of the Count stomping on her hand just as easily as a hair clip. _

__

_ With some distress, the girl’s eye caught on the tiny fly, knocked loose from its perch. She had been calling him Fry for months and now he was lying upside down, in a pretty realistic manner.  _

__

_ The only positive thing in all this was the knowledge that there had been a failsafe programmed into the barrette by Hal. If it ever broke it would automatically send a message to Spectrum headquarters as if she had transmitted a regular SOS signal. She focused her mind on the thought of Hitch coming to help her and wished she had pressed her watch just a little quicker, had cycled a little faster, gone to check out the TV guide’s clues with Hitch knowing where she had gone instead of on an impulse.  _

__

_ “Be honest with me Ruby. You really thought I had stepped off this mortal coil.” The Count demanded, crouching in front of her. She shied away instinctively, wracking her head with another wave of pain. He picked up the tiny tangle of wires that had been hidden in the plastic casing of the barrette, examining them with some interest.  _

__

_ With him distracted by the transmitter, the girl snuck another look around the room she had found herself in. There was a large stone set into the wall declaring the building officially opened by the Mayor in 1865, meaning this was the Old Town Hall, and not the modern Town-Hall-slash-museum closer to Main Street. The Count hadn’t taken her too far from the street he had found her on then.  _

__

_ The girl was lying on the raised stage at one end of the hall, the Count’s smirking face over her. The door to safety was at the far end, a distance that seemed insurmountable to her and her blurred double vision. The only windows she could see were high and old-fashioned, requiring a manual crank to open them.  _

__

_ She had attended a birthday party here once when it was still in use, aged six in a frock and paper hat. Her and Clancy had snuck off from ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’ to see what was backstage. It had all been locked doors and a tiny kitchenette, so no easy escape that way. While she may be able to hide in the wings for a few minutes, there was no way she could escape the Count properly.  _

__

_ So the door at the end. Easy enough.  _

__

_ “Honestly I’d just gotten used to the peace and quiet.” Turning her head back to him, she dredged up some banter to distract him while she got her breath back. “Been taking up knitting.”  _

__

_ The Count did look a little thrown at her comment. He had probably been expecting banana-bread making or whatever people with time on their hands did.  _

__

_ “But what use is a heroine without a villain?” He questioned her; a ruddy colour overtaking his pale face as she avoided his questions. “What makes you special if I am not on the flip side plotting? What’s darkness without light?” _

__

_ The girl reversed the question, her exhausted brain flicking it around like a puzzle. What made the Count special if he was not being stopped, was not the name on everyone’s horrified lips, was not centre of attention and directing his enemies off on merry little hunts? _

__

_ “That’s not my identity crisis to have, buster. I was getting along just fine without you plotting. But, if you kill me, what do  _ you _have left? Spectrum isn’t a challenge for you, killing me would ruin all your fun.” Blood was oozing down the side of her face, tracing new rivulets into her eye but she made no move to wipe it away. No need to enrage him._

__

_ “You do make a good point there. I watched your Spectrum friends search the pavements and the city, all from the building across the street. All of those eyes and spies and they still couldn’t find me.” The girl made a mental note of that. She was sure all of the surrounding buildings had been searched in the early hours of the 1st, but obviously the Count had slipped under the radar.  _

__

_ “How did you do it? There was a sweepstake going in HR and I get twenty bucks if you admit it was a bungee cord. I’ll even split it with you.” _

__

_ “While I’d love to give away all of my secrets, there are some things a magician should not reveal. You understand of course.” He gave her a tight smile, showing off all of his sharp teeth. The girl thought of wolves and bears and tried not to look like she was showing her throat.  _

__

_ “A magician? Thought you were a director and a poor one at that.”  _

__

_ The Count’s hands clenched into fists and the girl steeled herself. But then he was off and charging down a new track.  _

__

_ “Never mind all of that, there are more important matters at hand. Do you realise that no one can ever give you the challenge that I give you?” He was biting the words out between gritted teeth, completely intent on forcing an answer out of her.  _

__

_ She narrowed her eyes, and not just because the headache was worsening. A thought had struck her, much like how concrete could strike a skull, and she wondered what exactly the Count was taking his time for. He always liked a good monologue but only when she was already in the trap, with her head in the lion’s jaws. Why wasn’t he acting quickly before Spectrum arrived? Was someone else pulling the strings once again? Hitch had shown her pictures of Casey Morgan’s autopsy and she had seen the ashes. If it wasn’t Casey Morgan could it be someone worse? _

__

_ “Sure, the hunt was exciting, but as I always say, more thrill in the chase, no need to bother with the whole capture part. If you let me go, we could do it all again.” She tried to inject some enthusiasm in her voice. It was such a small, slim chance of persuading him, but his grandeur and self-importance may just be enough to convince him.  _

__

_ “You would say that, wouldn’t you?” Something in the Count’s tone changed and the girl knew immediately that there was no convincing him. Fun time was over. He slid a hand into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, and she took the opportunity to surge to her feet, shoving him hard as she sat up.  _

__

_ The world went black and fuzzy at the edges, but the girl knew logically, objectively that there would be a ground to catch her when she put her foot down, and a door to open when she fled and Hitch outside waiting for her. She didn’t have time to reorientate and clear her vision.  _

__

_ The Count had only rocked to the side when pushed but was surprised enough that she had a precious few seconds head start to hurtle down the stage stairs and run for the door.  _

__

_ There was a resonant thud as the Count leapt from the stage after her, and she could hear his footfalls louder than her own, but maybe not louder than her heartbeat. She tried to run in a straight line, desperate to reach the door first, but the dark splodges in her vision were scooping great chunks out of her surroundings and her feet were determinedly veering left like she’d been spun around too many times. _

__

_ But now that she was closer, she could see that the door was locked from the inside, key in the lock; she only had to grab the key, turn it before the Count caught her.  _

__

_ He was an old man, and she was in the prime of her health. Minus a braincell or two. It was fine, she had some to spare. _

__

_ Each breath felt like a punch against her bruised chest and she crashed against the doors, hands fumbling for the lock as quickly as possible.  _

__

_ The key turned just as a hand closed over the collar of her jacket, but it was weak, and he hadn’t caught enough material for a firm grip. _

__

_ Wrenching her head forward and out of his grasp, the girl was through the double doors before he could tighten his grip and pull her back in.  _

__

_ A breathless sob erupted from her throat as she felt his hold loosen, but she immediately choked on it when a foot hooked around her ankle.  _

__

_ Unable to slow her momentum, she tumbled down the marble steps of the Old Town Hall, seemingly hitting her head on every single one on her descent. Her legs got trapped underneath her when she tried to right herself, and with the next impact, she felt something snap sickeningly in her lower leg.  _

__

_ She ended up on her back at the bottom, not entirely sure that the sky was truly above her. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the Count, silhouetted in the light from the doorway. Panic overwhelmed her again and she gathered her legs under her to run without taking stock of her injuries. She had to go, evade the Count until Hitch arrived.  _

__

_ Hitch would arrive. Hitch always came for her.  _

__

_ Her breath was coming ragged and achingly loud in the cool night air. She risked a single glance behind her frantically but there was no one following her.  _

__

_ It couldn’t have been that easy. There was something wrong.  _

__

_ This new agony after the stairs was blinding and worsening with every step. She had barely managed to run another fifty yards in great limping leaps and hops when her right leg buckled, and she pitched forwards. Her arms came up to cradle her head like she’d been taught, although it was probably far too late for the headache that was brewing tomorrow morning.  _

__

_ Now on the pavement, dazed, she scrambled up into a sitting position, although her head was spinning badly enough to force her to squeeze her eyes closed. Even as the girl tried to encourage her limbs into moving, her body was slumping back against something solid behind her, and the adrenaline was draining so fast she didn’t think she could ever get up again. _

__

_ One last thought remained in her head: the need to activate the watch, to signal to Hitch who must be worried sick after the lack of follow-up on the barrette SOS.  _

__

_ She tried so hard to call him, knowing his voice would be enough to calm her hyperventilating breaths but her limbs were like lead and she couldn’t even muster the energy to slap a hand on her watch.  _

__

_ Hitch would be so disappointed. If the Count didn’t find her first.  _

__

_ An apology flitted across her mind, hoping he would understand when she saw him again and this time when she closed her eyes she didn’t wake up.  _

__

_ The beam of headlights raking her face as a car jumped the curb to stop in front of her didn’t wake her, nor the man who tried shaking her awake.  _

__

_ She didn’t remember being placed in the backseat. His hand clasping hers tightly as he sped towards the hospital wasn’t enough to rouse her.  _

__

_ His pleas, his begging for her to open her eyes or squeeze his hand, didn’t even register. _

__

_ It was three days before she woke up at all, and even then, she didn’t remember. _


End file.
